


Wanderings

by sariane



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Arm Porn, Explicit Sexual Content, Healing, M/M, Mind Control Aftermath & Recovery, Not Captain America: The Winter Soldier Compliant, Reunions, Road Trips, Slow Burn, jossed because it took me so long, winter soldier - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-22
Updated: 2014-04-22
Packaged: 2018-01-20 08:41:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 22,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1504028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sariane/pseuds/sariane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>With their names at the top of SHIELD's Most Wanted lists, Steve takes Bucky - the Winter Soldier - and runs to save him.</p><p>Bucky isn't sure why he goes with Steve, especially after everything he's done, or why Steve is giving him a second chance. He only knows that he owes it to Steve to try.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wanderings

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write and post my take on the Winter Soldier storyline in the MCU before the movie came out. Obviously, that didn’t happen, because I’m slow and school is killing me. It was plotted out and almost entirely written before I saw the movie, so any similarities are just evidence of my psychic powers. 
> 
> There’s a lot of angst and emotional trauma in this fic, but (spoilers), it ends well. It’s not quite a story about healing, but it’s a story about coping, at least, and the hope to one day heal.
> 
> This fic contains spoilers for the original Winter Soldier comic arc (it's mostly based on that), but **no spoilers for the movie**. 
> 
> Warnings:  
> -Discussion of Bucky’s loss of limb, metal arm, and body image insecurities.  
> -Explicit sexual content.  
> -Graphic violence.  
> -Mindfuckery of the Winter Soldier variety: Memory modification, dehumanization, emotional trauma, behavioral programming, triggering, reference to abuse.  
> -Swearing.  
> -Portrayal of depression, PTSD, and other undiagnosed anxiety disorders.
> 
> Please let me know if I’ve missed a warning.

The car is cold despite the heater cranking along and the jacket around his shoulders. The window feels like ice against his forehead from resting his head against the glass. He’d fallen asleep staring at the passing highway, trying to avoid the driver’s eyes.

Steve looks over at him. Bucky sees Steve’s gaze reflected in the widow and closes his eyes again, feigning sleep. He keeps his breaths slow and steady.

The car begins to decelerate as Steve switches lanes and drives onto the exit. Bucky keeps up his act, feigning sleep like a kid who wants to be carried into the house by his parents after a long car ride. They stop at a BP for gas.

Steve shuts the car door softly and begins to fill up the tank, leaving Bucky alone in the passenger seat. The keys are still in the ignition. This is his chance. He could run. He could open the passenger door and take off before Steve even notices he’s gone. He could disappear into the nearby woods, hotwire a car, steal a few wallets, and he’d be home free. Steve would never find him. Not if Bucky didn’t want him to.

But, hell, he could have run miles ago. He doesn’t know what he’s waiting for.

Bucky screws his eyes shut again as the car door opens once more. Steve slips in and closes it as quietly as possible, keeping up the façade that Bucky is still asleep. He drives down the dark road and past a Budget Inn, past houses, decrepit lots, car dealerships, a doughnut shop, and a post office before he finally pulls into a parking lot outside a burger joint.

Steve stops the car and turns off the engine.

“Hey,” he says quietly, turning to look at Bucky. “We’re here.”

Bucky makes a show of stretching and yawning as he pretends to awaken. “Where are we?” he asks, as if he hasn’t been reading the road signs on the highway.

“Ohio,” Steve says. “Come on. Let’s get something to eat.” He slams the car door shut behind him. Bucky looks down at his robotic arm and pulls his glove on tighter, making sure there’s no glint of metal visible from underneath his sleeve. He curls his hand into a fist. Steve’s waiting on him.

Swallowing a sigh, Bucky opens the car door and trails behind Steve into the burger joint.

Steve orders two dozen sliders and a few servings of French fries from a guy with a full sleeve tattoo who doesn’t seem to recognize him as Captain America. He motions for Bucky to choose a table while he pays for their dinner.

Bucky chooses a spot in the corner, the most defensible in the entire restaurant, with a good view of the windows and the few late-night patrons. He sits with his back to the wall so Steve will have to sit with his back to the others. He winces as he sits down, feeling his cracked rib send a jolt of pain in his abdomen. It should heal up soon.

When Steve joins him, carrying a tray loaded with a mountain of fries and their burgers and drinks, he sets the food down in front of Bucky and pushes half of it across the table.

“Eat up,” Steve says, not hesitating to dig in himself.

Bucky stares at the food in front of him. His stomach feels like a rock, cold and hard and shriveled up.

 _“Eat,”_  Steve says, in a tone that reminds Bucky of himself, back in the day, back when Steve was skinny and –

He sighs and takes a bite, if only so Steve won’t say it again.

“I was thinking we should go north,” Steve says in an undertone, after he’s scarfed down a few burgers. He isn’t looking at Bucky. He stares down at the map in his lap, his eyelashes curled long and dark against his cheek. He has bags under his eyes like dark bruises.

“Why north?” Bucky asks. He’d like to go somewhere  _warm_ for once.

“My friend spent some time up in Canada when he was on the run from the army,” Steve says.

“Is there a safehouse?” Bucky asks. He wonders if it ever occurred to Steve to set up safehouses across the country. He’ll learn, after this, Bucky will teach him if he has to, to set up drop points and safe houses, to create identities and become them as seamlessly as breathing. Steve probably never considered that he’d need one before.

“Natasha offered—“ Steve starts, but Bucky cuts him off.

“If she knows it, it isn’t safe,” Bucky says quietly. His voice feels heavy and rough, like he has a sore throat that won’t clear. He dips a fry into some ketchup and pops it into his mouth so he doesn’t have to answer Steve’s questioning look.

“I trust her,” Steve says. Of course he does. Steve trusts  _Bucky_  right now, for whatever reason.

“That’s why they’ll expect her to help you,” Bucky says. “They’ll be monitoring all contact, and even she isn’t good enough to completely avoid their scrutiny.”

“Do you have anywhere in mind?” Steve asks, looking up just quickly enough to catch Bucky’s eye. He tries not to flinch away from Steve’s gaze. He passes Bucky the map over the table.

Bucky’s fingers itch as he takes the map, thinking of all the safehouses dancing in the back of his brain, places where the right people could find him again, places he could lure Steve and collect his –

“I don’t know,” Bucky shrugs, handing the map back. “Somewhere out west, I guess.”

Steve hums and takes it from him. “We should get back on the road,” he says, glancing at his watch.

“You aren’t going to get some sleep first? You’ve been driving for eight hours,” Bucky says, trying carefully not to sound like he’s nagging.

“Don’t need so much sleep anymore,” Steve says. “We’ll get a motel when we get tired. C’mon.”

Steve stands up and slips into his coat, emptying their tray before he heads to the door and out into the night, expecting Bucky to follow him.

*

The blade of the knife was cold as he ran a finger down its edge, testing its sharpness. His metal fingers made a sharp clang against the steel.  

Below him, Captain America struggled against the reinforced handcuffs that bound him to the support pole.

“Bucky,” he gasped desperately. His heels scuffed against the concrete floor of the basement as he struggled to get to his feet. The cuffs clinked as he stood, sliding them up the pole. “Bucky, please,” Rogers  pleaded, “you’ve got to try to fight it, Bucky, you’ve got to remember—“

“Shut up,” he growled in response, leering closer to Captain America. His head was aching, almost as though it was about to split down the middle. He tossed his knife from his right to left hand, watching how Rogers’ eyes tracked the movement. It distracted him, but only for a moment.

“I know you’re still in there, Bucky,” Captain America said. “I know you can hear me. And I know that somewhere, deep down, you’re you. Bucky –“

“I said,  _shut up!_ ” he yelled, voice reverberating around the empty walls, quieting Captain America for a long moment.

What Captain America didn’t say was easy to read in his eyes.

Bu –  _The Winter Soldier_ turned away, the broken halves of the knife falling from his metal hand and hitting the floor with a clang.

*

The sun is a misty orange as it rises over the highway, casting the brown fields in a rosy glow. Bucky stares out through the perspiration on the car window and watches it rise. He hasn’t slept at all.

Steve pulls out a burner phone and hands it to Bucky without taking his eyes off the road.

“It’s the only number in there,” he says. Bucky stares at the cell phone like it’s a snake before he opens the contacts and calls ‘Red.’ He wonders if SHIELD is listening.

“If you’re calling for a ransom, I’ll pay you to keep him,” Natasha Romanoff says the moment she picks up. Bucky swallows, trying to find his voice.

“Which one of us?” he asks. He sounds even rougher than last night.

“Does it matter?” Natasha says lightly. If she’s surprised to hear his voice and not Steve’s, she chooses not to show it.

“Is she giving you a hard time?” Steve asks from the driver’s seat. “Tell her I’m passing up Bruce’s offer.”

Bucky moves the phone away from his mouth. “Just tell her yourself,” he says.

“I won’t talk on the phone while I’m driving,” Steve says. “It’s illegal.”

“I heard,” Natasha says, sounding rather amused. “Tell him not to do anything stupid.”

Bucky almost laughs.

“Been trying to tell him that for years. Never worked then,” he says, then freezes. He stares out at the highway, watching it zip by. It’s light enough now to see the traffic and the trees, but Bucky isn’t thinking about that.

Steve switches to the outside lane. “Maybe I—“ he started, reaching out to take the phone, but Bucky snaps back and turns away.

“She says not to do anything stupid,” Bucky says on rote, sounding sharp and cold even to his own ears.

Emotion doesn’t show in Natasha’s voice as she carefully says, “This line is secure, but SHIELD is monitoring nearly everything else. Wilson and Carter are under surveillance, too, but they still don’t have any evidence that we had anything to do with your escape. They’re trying to pick up your trail. They want Stark’s help, but he—“

“Laughed at the thought of Captain America on the run?” Steve says, a bitter note in his voice. Bucky supposes he can hear everything Natasha says through the phone’s tiny speaker with his super-soldier hearing. He wonders what happened between Steve and Stark.

 “He told them that if they locked you up, he’d leak SHIELD’s databases on 4chan,” Natasha says flatly. Steve doesn’t say anything.

“Are you wondering what 4chan is?” Bucky says, breaking the silence. (He isn’t even sure if  _he_ knows what 4chan is.) Thankfully, Steve laughs.

“How are Sharon and Sam fairing?” Steve asks.

“Carter is still trying to call in favors to call off the manhunt. Wilson’s getting hell from Hill for not securing you,” Natasha sighs. “Barton’s not back yet. I don’t know  _where_ he’s been lately.”

“He’ll find his way back eventually, Natasha,” Steve says. Bucky feels like an intruder to their conversation. “We better go,” Steve says a moment later. “I’ll check in again in two days. I’ll let you know if—“ he looks sideways at Bucky, who pretends not to notice “—if things don’t work out.”

“I’m counting on that,” Natasha says. Bucky looks over at Steve and watches him keep his eyes on the road, his jaw set like he’s just made some kind of decision. “James,” Natasha says softly, so that Steve can’t hear and Bucky has to press the phone to his ear. “Take care of him. Don’t let him think too much. You know how he gets.”

Before Bucky can open his mouth to say,  _I’m not sure I do_ , she disconnects.

Automatically, he turns off the phone, pulls out the battery, and opens the glove box to pull out a map.

“Which exit do I take?” Steve asks.

“The next one should do,” Bucky says, tracing their route with his finger. “We doubling back, or driving to another highway?”

“You really don’t trust Natasha?” Steve asks, flicking on his turn signal.

“I don’t trust anyone,” Bucky says in a low voice. Steve pulls off the highway and onto the exit ramp.

*

The Black Widow was faster than he remembered her being – if it was the same Black Widow at all.

She caught him unawares, utilizing the electro-shock of her Widow’s Bite to stun him for a moment. Stumbling, he threw her off him and fell to the ground, muscles tightening painfully. Gritting his teeth, he took back control of his body and lunged for the Widow. She had a dagger gripped tightly in her hand.

She kicked him in the jaw, sending him spinning, blood dripping from a split lip. With a shout, he turned back and sliced his knife through the air, cutting through her black suit and grazing skin. The Widow twisted away from his blade and brought her hand out to disarm him. She hit his flesh-and-bone wrist hard enough for him to drop the knife. As soon as his guard slipped, she kneed him in the groin.

The Black Widow was relentless and efficient as she brought him down, strike after brutal strike, parrying his every blow. He was better than this – he was better than  _her,_ he knew it, he’d taught her every dirty trick – but she was different, somehow.

She threw him to the ground and twisted his right arm back, holding down the metal one with a grinding heel. His blood pounded in his ears, the soundtrack to his piercing headache, but he kept silent and still.

“Cap,” she said into her comms. “Cap, I’ve got him.”

“No, you haven’t,” he growled, twisting on his stomach to grab the Black Widow’s ankle and send her flying to the ground. She yelped as her head skidded against the pavement.

He tried to lock her legs, but she kicked him in the stomach, bruising his ribs. Short of breath, he tried to gain the upper hand again, but the Widow was ahead of him, delivering a series of sharp blows to all of his pressure points and wrapping her legs around his arms and neck.

With a gun pointed at his forehead, he froze, staring at the Black Widow above him. Her chest heaved as she said again, “Cap, I’ve got him. What’s the call?”

“Don’t shoot,” Captain America called. He could hear the slap of feet on the concrete as Captain America came running to the rescue. “I repeat, don’t shoot him. Hold position.”

The Black Widow didn’t take her eyes off him, not even when Rogers stopped.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Bucky,” he said, looking down. He pulled the cowl off his face. “I know you might not remember who I am right now, but I know who you are. Your name is James Buchanan Barnes,” he said firmly. “I called you Bucky. You called me Steve.”

“Steve…” the Black Widow’s voice trailed off.

“If you come with us, we won’t hurt you,” Captain America said, almost  _gently._

“Steve?” he asked over the pounding in his skull.

“Bucky,” Rogers breathed, leaning closer.

He spat in Captain America’s face.

The world went black a few moments later when they tranquilized him.

*

The next day, after they’ve eaten a shitty complimentary breakfast and checked out of their hotel, Steve doesn’t get back on the highway.

Bucky doesn’t ask. Steve turns on the radio, but he gets nothing but static out here in the boonies. They pass acre after acre of forest, heading northwest. The sun comes out from behind the clouds and Steve flips on a pair of modern sunglasses that make him look ridiculous and strangely handsome. Bucky turns his head back to watch the trees pass by.

It’s around lunchtime when Steve pulls into the parking lot of a lakeside trail. Bucky gets out of the car to stretch his legs while Steve grabs something from the trunk.

Even though it’s technically spring and the sun is shining, it’s still chilly out, the early April air leaving goosebumps on Bucky’s neck. He scans the parking lot carefully, but it’s empty. The place isn’t a national park, just a metro park or a local foot trail or something. It feels strangely desolate here, under the mostly-bare trees.

Bucky stretches and grins to feel that his ribs have fully healed, along with all of his cuts and bruises. Steve hasn’t shown a sign of their fight in a day or so, but he hadn’t been hurt as badly as Bucky. Thankfully.

“You coming or not?” Steve calls suddenly. Bucky tramps around the car to see Steve holding a few water bottles and some of the food he’d packed. He catches a glimpse of Steve’s shield in the trunk before he slams it shut.

“We going on a picnic?” Bucky asks, snorting.

“If you’re going to make fun, you can eat in the car,” Steve says, throwing him a water bottle and an apple. Bucky wonders what Steve would do if he chopped the apple in half with his hand in midair or something – he could, if Steve threw it hard enough – but he just catches the bottle and apple.

He grabs a blanket from the backseat and follows Steve down the foot trail.

The lake is more of a pond and the water is a little foggy, but there’s a picnic table and the sun is bright enough to keep them warm. There’s even a rickety old pier, probably for the local kids to use as a swimming hole. Bucky hopes Steve doesn’t choose to start pursuing a conversation  _now_ , all of a sudden, and he doesn’t.

Bucky stares down at his meal, avoiding Steve’s eyes as always, and listens to the birds as he eats. He wonders faintly if there are any mountain lions around here. He frowns down at his cybernetic arm and is thankful they didn’t think to give him  _claws._

Steve gets up, and Bucky thinks he’s headed back to the car or the outhouse until he realizes that Steve’s walking towards the pier at the edge of the lake. Bucky watches him out of the corner of his eye, wondering how far he’d be able to skip a stone with his robotic arm.

Steve pulls off his shirt and throws it on the grass.

“Steve?” Bucky says, sitting upright as Steve starts stripping – right there, in front of God and everybody – and throws his pants, his shoes, his boxers onto the splintery pier. He runs the last few feet and dives into the lake.

It’s got to be  _freezing._ “Steve?!” Bucky yells.

Steve doesn’t resurface. Bucky waits, realizes he’s standing, and runs a hand through his hair frantically. Steve’s still underwater, though, with not a ripple on the surface of the water. Bucky wonders if he’s hit his head during his dive, or if there was something else to the lake. It would be just their luck to picnic at the lake that hid a secret AIM facility or mutant piranhas or something. Steve could be unconscious or drowning or trapped down there.

“Steve!” Bucky yells again.

Bucky rips off his shirt and pants and runs to the edge of the pier, leaving his boxers on. He jumps into the water without a second’s hesitation, going in well over his head. He flips his wet hair out of his face as he surfaces, calling, “Steve?” 

He dives down into the water, trying to see through the murk, but he can’t make out any shapes. Steve is nowhere to be found.

When he resurfaces, Steve does, too, laughing and splashing as he treads water.

“Steve!” Bucky yells, splashing him, “What the hell?! What did you—“ he stops as Steve laughs and splashes him back.

“Just keeping you on your toes,” Steve says with a smile. His blonde hair is plastered back against his head, darkened by the water. Bucky shivers in the cold water, frowning at Steve until he almost looks like he feels bad.

Bucky dives back underneath the water and grabs Steve’s foot. He pulls him down to the bottom, Steve struggling only a cursory amount (he  _knows_ how strong Steve is, Steve could kick his grip if he wanted to) until Bucky lets him free. When he turns, he can barely see Steve in the dark water.

It’s otherworldly down here, with just the two of them – their bodies like dark shadows, the particles and dirt they kicked up like smoke, leaves and twigs floating on the water above, blocking out what little sunlight makes it down to the bottom. Bucky feels like he’s left the world of the living, where he’s a monster and Steve’s a hero and they’re stuck seventy years out of their time. He feels like a shade.

Steve swims closer, close enough that Bucky can just make out his features through the water. He’s like a statue, chiseled shadow and light, tinted a grayish blue from the water. Steve lets out a stream of bubbles before he swims towards the surface.

Bucky kicks his feet and pushes himself upwards until he breaks the surface of the water, gasping for air. Steve’s laughing again, treading water from a few feet away.

“We couldn’t have done this in the summer?” Bucky grumbles. Steve smiles crookedly at him, and Bucky curses himself.  _Summer._ Like this is even going to last the month.

“Fine, so it’s a little brisk,” Steve says with a shit-eating grin.

“Yeah, right,” Bucky huffs. “We should get outta here, who knows what kind of shit is in this water? And it’s freezing. You’ll get sick.”

“Can’t get sick that easily,” Steve says smugly, leaning to float on his back. “Come on, have a little fun.”

“Ugh, my eyes,” Bucky says dramatically, shading his eyes. Steve laughs and backstrokes lazily away in the freezing water. Bucky splashes him and swims over to the dock, pulling himself out of the water. If the air was chilly before, it’s freezing now.

Bucky wrings out his hair and winces at his wet boxers, but he heads over to the picnic table barefoot to grab the blanket and dry himself off. He’s considering going commando underneath his dry clothes when he sees a state trooper pull into the parking lot.

Bucky crouches down behind the picnic table instantly, the towel wrapped tightly around him. He glances back at Steve, then towards the parking lot again.

He runs to the edge of the dock, gathering up their clothes on his way, and leans out over the water.

“Steve,” he calls in a low tone, hoping Steve can hear him from where he’s swimming. “Steve, there’s a state trooper.”

Steve must hear him, because he zips through the water with quick determination. Bucky pulls his pants and shirt on over his wet boxers and holds out the blanket for Steve to wrap around his waist as he changes. Bucky quickly shrugs into his jacket to hide his metal arm.

They exchange dark glances as they pick up their kicked-off shoes. Steve tries to dry off his hair with the wet blanket, but Bucky knows  _his_  long, dripping hair will give them away.

“Let me handle this,” Steve says quietly as Bucky slips into his shoes. Bucky doesn’t argue. If Steve can’t handle it, he knows  _he_ can.

They sit down at the picnic table and pick at the remains of their lunch in relative silence, waiting to see if the ranger will confront them or leave. A few minutes pass, giving Bucky time to think of dozens of ways to escape and hide here.

Steve nudges Bucky’s foot with his own.

“Hey,” he says quietly. “Nobody’s getting hurt today.” He says it like a promise, but Bucky feels as though it’s a warning for him –  _behave._ He grits his teeth and nods.

“Afternoon,” the trooper says as he approaches their picnic table. Bucky quickly shoves his left hand in his pocket to hide the glint of his robotic hand. He wishes he hadn’t been stupid enough to leave his glove in the car.

“Good afternoon,” Steve says brightly.

“Bit chilly for a picnic, ain’t it?” the trooper asks with a curious look at Bucky’s wet hair. There isn’t a ‘No Swimming’ sign, but Bucky gets the feeling that the man doesn’t like the look of him.

“Spring fever,” Steve says with his patented Captain America smile. Bucky curses it, hoping it doesn’t get him recognized. “You know how it is. It’s a nice day, compared to the winter we’ve had. Good day for a walk and a snack.”

“Most people don’t hike this trail until it warms up,” the ranger said, staring Bucky down, probably because he has his hand in his pocket, like he’s about to draw a weapon. Bucky doesn’t have a knife on him, for once. “You folks local?”

“Just passing through,” Steve says.

“That your car out there?”

“Yes, sir,” Steve says, and Bucky internally sighs. Sir’s aren’t going to get them anywhere. Not with this guy.

“ _Technically_ , it’s  _my_  car,” Bucky says with a lazy smirk at Steve. “I paid for half of it.”

“I’ve been doing all the driving,” Steve says, catching on after a moment’s hesitation.

“So, what are you two doing up here, boys?” The ranger looks between them, squinting. Bucky reads the tension in the man’s shoulders as he squints at Bucky, looking to see if he has a weapon on him. 

 “Well,” Bucky says, elbowing Steve with a laugh. “If you won’t tell ‘im…Grant’s wife Margaret’s having a baby next week,” he smiles. “His first kid. She wanted to have it upstate, near her family, so we drove up here.”

“My wife was the same,” the ranger nods, his posture settling a little. “Where you two from?”

“Indiana,” Steve lies easily. “It’s beautiful country around here. Almost wish I would’ve listened to Margaret and moved up here instead.” Steve isn’t the best at this, he’s not a natural (not like Natasha), but Bucky can play along well enough to fool the trooper. Bucky drops a few jokes about taking care of his baby brother, playing the city-kids spin that’s easy because it’s half true. Finally, the trooper drops his guard.

“Well,” Bucky says after a few minutes’ conversation, wishing he had a watch to pretend to check. “We better get going. Can’t be late, it’ll be my fault, somehow. Margaret never liked me much.”

Steve looks over at Bucky, almost betraying them with a sharp expression before he catches himself.

 “Drive safe,” the park ranger says, glancing at Bucky again. “Have you watched the news lately? There’s some nutjob loose in the area, they think.”

Bucky’s heart drops. His hair, he thinks. The ranger has recognized him by his hair.

“No, haven’t heard that,” Steve says, glancing at Bucky like he’s afraid of running into the guy. Inside, Bucky is laughing bitterly.

“Won’t be picking up hitchhikers, then,” Bucky laughs. Without removing his left hand from his pocket and giving the game away, he picks up their blanket and helps Steve gather their things.

They head up to the car and load their stuff into the trunk in a painful silence, careful to keep an eye on the ranger. Bucky watches the man in the side mirrors as they pull onto the road. The park ranger writes down their license plate.

“Shit,” Bucky says under his breath as they drive away. “We need to ditch this car. He recognized me. He’ll call it in, and – shit. My picture must be  _– fuck it all_ ,” he swears again, running a hand through his drying hair and wishing they’d thought to cut it. It feels dirty and stiff from the lake water and, worst of all,  _wrong,_ long from negligence to cut it, not style.

“I’ll switch the plates  for now,” Steve says. “Then we can ditch this car and get a new one. It’s okay. If it wasn’t him, it would be some kid taking a picture of Captain America on their cell phone. It’s not your fault.”

“It’s my fault you’re even in this situation to begin with,” Bucky says darkly under his breath, eyes glued to the mirrors to watch for anyone in pursuit. “I didn’t ask for this.”

“Don’t say that,” Steve says. “None of this is your fault. We’ll figure it out.” Bucky can feel Steve’s eyes on him when he doesn’t answer. “You know,” he says, changing his tone as he tries to change the subject. “Peggy liked you.”

“That was just smoke,” Bucky says. “And not good smoke, at that. We need better covers.”

“Peggy thought that you were brave. She knew you were a good man,” Steve continues, ignoring him.

“ _Were_ ,” Bucky mutters to himself. “Don’t worry about it, alright? We need a new car, new IDs…” he trails off with a sigh. He could get all that stuff on his own, easy. It’s Steve that complicates things. It’s hard to go on the run with Captain America.

“If you’re willing to trust someone, I think I know how a contact who can help,” Steve says, almost cagey. “He’s been off the grid for awhile. Even Natasha’s had trouble finding him.” Bucky looks over at him.

“Not just anyone,” Bucky says carefully. “Please tell me they aren’t SHIELD.”

Steve laughs. “Do I know anyone who  _isn’t_ SHIELD?” he asks with a cocked eyebrow. “Don’t worry. You two will get along just fine.”

*

The Winter Soldier struggled to throw them off as they strapped him down to the chair.

He’d been here before – but not  _here_  – he’d  _done_ this before – but it wasn’t like this – Lukin – HYDRA – they’d – he’d –

“Can’t you tranq him again?” the Falcon asked as he tried to hold the Soldier down.

“It won’t work if he’s sedated,” Captain America answered, gritting his teeth and straining to hold down the robotic arm.

The heavy metal cuff clapped down over his wrist, securing him to the chair. The Soldier glared up at his captors in silence.

“Yeah, so says your creepy ex-terrorist brainwashing friend here,” Falcon muttered, Captain Rogers with the other cuff.

“Do you  _want_ my help or not?” Dr. Zola said. He was bent over by age, but his eyes still glinted with a sick enthusiasm. They were familiar somehow, in a way that made the Winter Soldier’s head ache.

“Yeah, don’t talk about me behind my back,” the Black Widow said, startling the Falcon as she appeared behind him, carrying something in her hand. It looked like a hard drive, but larger, older, not like the sleek, light technology and holograms of today.

Now that they’d strapped his arms and legs to the chair, his three captors stood back, letting Zola get to work. He took the hard drive from the Widow and plugged it into the clunky computers hooked up to the chair. When the screen lit up green and black, he clapped his hands together and grinned.

“The information transfer has been a success!” he said, “it seems our subject here has files that date back to the fifties – good work from my serum, indeed, if his body had the ability to survive the fall and the ice for as long as that.” Zola leered forwards.

“Can you undo his programming?” Rogers asked, his voice sharp as he cut off Zola’s barely controlled glee.

“Ah,” Zola said, hesitating. “You ask different things. His memories – his entire life, his past missions, intelligence information that was wiped – are all stored here. His programming – training, instructions, triggers, directives – would take time to wipe. It might even be impossible to deprogram him completely without wiping his mind.”

“We aren’t wiping him,” Rogers said firmly. “His memories. Can you restore them?”

“The information is here, of course,” Zola hummed. “And the equipment, although it is not the original, is sufficient. He may regain all of his memories, or none, or some; or, perhaps, he shall lose them all once more. I can try, of course, but there is no guarantee—“

“Do it,” Captain America snapped.

“Steve,” Falcon said slowly. “Are you sure—?”

“I can’t leave him like this,” Rogers said, his voice grown quiet. “I can’t do that to him.”

*

“He’s SHIELD,” Bucky grunts as he watches a blonde guy in a purple cutoff t-shirt jump out of a truck. It must be around forty degrees in the abandoned lot where they’d chose to meet, but this guy looks like he has something against sleeves.

“Yeah, and you’re a wanted terrorist,” Clint Barton says, tossing Steve a duffel bag. “You’re nuts, Rogers.”

“Nice to see you, too, Clint,” Steve says, unzipping the bag. He pulls out their IDs and passes one to Bucky.  _James Monroe_ , it reads. Cute.

 Bucky crosses his arms.

“Here’s the keys to the truck,” Barton said, handing Steve the keys. “Four-wheel drive, extra plates behind the seat, and papers in the glove box. I didn’t know if you needed ammo—“

“I have my shield,” Steve interrupts, shooting Barton a look. Bucky thought Steve had hidden a gun  _somewhere,_ but he hadn’t gone looking. He wouldn’t – he hadn’t gone into hiding without  _guns,_ had he? He hadn’t taken  _the Winter Soldier_ with him without bringing a gun?

“There’s a compartment below the middle seat,” Clint frowns. “If you don’t want it, Barnes—“

“Where’s the safehouse?” Steve interrupts again, not looking at Bucky.

“Keys and map are in the bag,” Clint says after a long moment. “It’s out in the sticks, halfway up a mountain, no cell service, but it’s the best I got.”

“How’d you swing a place like this?” Bucky asks, pulling out the map to memorize it the best he can before Steve takes it.

“Wedding gift,” Barton smirks, “good honeymoon spot, Barnes. Should be enough canned food in the pantry to keep you there for awhile, but you might want to pick up some groceries at the last stop.” He turns to Bucky and eyes him up and down, taking in his robot arm and the hard lines of muscle underneath his shirt.

“You done checking me out, pal, or are you taking me out to dinner with the show?” Bucky growls, glaring at Barton. Steve sighs heavily.

To his surprise, Barton throws his head back and laughs. “What’s on the menu, a knuckle sandwich?” he asks, shaking his head. “You’re alright, kid,” he nods approvingly, holding out a hand. “I’m Clint Barton. Hawkeye.”

“You’re not a bad shot,” Bucky nods, shaking his hand with an appraising look. “For a guy with a bow.”

“You’re not a bad shot, either,” Clint smirks back, throwing in a wink for good measure. “For a guy with a gun.”

“We better get going,” Steve says suddenly, shouldering his duffel. “Thanks, Clint. Tell Natasha I’ll be in touch.”

“Don’t worry, Cap, I’m not poaching on your territory,” Clint says laughingly, clapping Steve on the back. He backs away towards their old car, throwing Steve a sloppy, mocking salute. “Good luck.”

Bucky watches as Steve chuckles and shakes his head somewhat fondly. They turn to their new truck while Clint gets into the old car. He’d promised to drive it up to Canada and ditch it somewhere to throw SHIELD off their scent for a few days.

“Oh, and Barnes,” Clint calls, rolling down the window of the car. “If you hurt him, I will personally stick an arrow in a place arrows were never meant to be.”

Steve shoots Bucky an apologetic glance as Clint drives off, sending a spray of mud splattering up from his tires.

“Sorry about that,” Steve says with a shrug.

“He’s right,” Bucky mutters. “Don’t forget that.”

Tightlipped, Steve slams the driver’s door of the truck shut. Bucky gets into the passenger’s side. He surreptitiously runs a hand underneath the middle seat, feeling for the catch with his smooth metal fingers…

“Don’t,” Steve says. He turns the key in the ignition.

“You  _can’t_  have gone out here without any weapons—“

“I don’t want anyone getting hurt,” Steve says firmly. He puts the truck into drive and heads towards the road, driving in the opposite direction of Clint.

“Look, if you wanted to keep me away from weapons, maybe you should’ve deactivated my arm,” Bucky says sharply. “Want to take that away from me, too? Because someone’s going to get hurt, whether it’s a gun or a shield or a fist. We’re weapons, Steve. It’s what we are.”

Steve’s grip on the steering wheel tightens. Bucky swallows, realizing he’s gone too far. He’s stayed quiet as he could until now, but it couldn’t last long. The quiet fills the truck as they speed down the road, towards the mountains in the distance. Bucky bites his tongue and wonders if Steve would chase him if he jumped out of the truck and ran for it.

“You’re not a weapon,” Steve says quietly, breaking the silence. Bucky keeps his eyes forward, staring at a purple-gray peak on the horizon. Bucky can’t bring himself to argue.

Steve drives onwards in the sticky silence, not bothering to turn on the radio or make any asides, not even as the hours stretch on and the sky begins to darken. Bucky leans the passenger seat back and closes his eyes to feign sleep, wondering how much longer Steve will let him keep up the pretense.

He tries not to think about the argument, as short as it was, but it doesn’t leave him alone. He vaguely remembers worse arguments than this, about the rent, or…tuition, he thinks, or enlisting in the army. Bucky would give a lot for them to be arguing about those dumb little things instead.

They only stop for gas, fast food, and the occasional bathroom break from there. Bucky can’t even sleep for real, even though it’s mostly dark on the stretches of road they’re traveling on and Steve still won’t turn on the radio. Eventually, he gives up pretending and sits up, glancing over at Steve.

Steve’s eyes are tired and red from lack of sleep. In the near-darkness, the bags underneath his eyes look more like bruises, Steve’s face akin to the thin and pallid version Bucky can remember perfectly if he concentrates on it. Bucky realizes that Steve’s been driving for nearly twenty-four hours now, from the early hour they’d left the last motel to meet up with Clint, and now through the night.

Bucky reaches over and sets his right hand on Steve’s shoulder, jolting him back to full alertness.

“Let’s get a motel,” he says. Steve swallows.

“But we might be—“

“A motel and a pair of scissors,” Bucky says, running a hand through his dirty, lank hair. It smells like lake water and sweat. “And maybe a shower.”

Steve gives in too easily and follows Bucky’s directions from the map to the nearest town.

The two of them look suspicious this late, but Steve wears a hat and manages to get them a shitty motel room with some of the cash Clint supplied. They’re still a day’s drive away from the safehouse, close enough to make it without any big stops, but Bucky knows Steve needs the sleep. He isn’t sure that Steve’s slept the entire trip, now that he thinks about it. He’s barely been able to, himself.

Bucky knows he can force himself to lay back and sleep if he wants to, he’s done it a hundred times, but he doesn’t know who he’ll be when he wakes up if he tries that again. A part of him wonders if that would be easier than this.

The motel room has only one bed, a shitty tube television, and water that smells like sulfur, but Bucky is too tired to care. He lets Steve have the first shower and collapses on the bed only half-undressed, ignoring the thin, squeaky mattress and the scratchy blankets. He’s  _tired._ He feels like he’s been tired for years, like he hasn’t slept properly since 1941. He wonders faintly if he truly hasn’t.

He’s tired and warm, and after an indeterminate amount of time, he feels someone nudge up against his side, someone who smells like well water and soap and toothpaste and  _doesn’t_ send all his alarm bells ringing.

Steve might have changed –  _he’s_ changed – but a few inches, a hundred pounds, and seventy years somehow haven’t changed Steve’s scent. He smells sweet, like soap and skin, green grass and, weirdly, sea salt. Bucky takes it all in, and it brings him back to one last parting hug, Steve burying his face in his shoulder, Bucky swallowing past a lump in his throat.

“Budge up,” Steve says sleepily, his bare skin brushing against Bucky’s metal arm.

Bucky’s eyes jolt open. He flinches back from Steve, nearly falling off the bed in the process.

“Gonna take my shower,” Bucky says quickly, not bothering to look back at Steve as he barrels towards the bathroom and locks the door behind him.

He leans over the sink and takes long, deep breaths, staring at himself in the mirror and replaying it all in his head. It wasn’t Steve who’d flinched away at the sensation of metal on skin. It was  _him._

Bucky turns the shower up as hot as it will go. It still isn’t hot enough, but he washes away the lake water and the sweat and shampoos his hair. He even tries the little bottle of cheap conditioner, wondering if it’ll make his long hair more manageable. He wonders if Steve has a pair of scissors with him. Probably in the first aid kit.

Bucky turns off the shower and wraps a towel around his waist to go out into the room and find the scissors. He rummages through Steve’s duffel, gripping the towel with one hand, until he finds the first aid kid and the scissors. Bucky straightens up and turns back towards the bathroom.

“Let me do that,” Steve says, sitting up in bed. He’s wearing loose pajama pants and a weary frown, like he’s tried sleeping, but his mind is too caught up in something to let him.

“I can—“ Bucky starts.

“I’ll do it better,” Steve says, forcing a smile. “I know how vain you are.”

Bucky retreats to the bathroom and stands in front of the mirror, clutching his towel around his naked waist. He’s still shining with water from the shower, ignoring the chill of the air on his damp skin.

“Look down, over the sink,” Steve instructs. He stands behind Bucky, both of them facing the mirror. “It’s pretty long.”

“I never really thought about it,” Bucky says as the scissors begin to snip. Inches of his long, brown hair begin to fall into the sink. Some of them fall onto the yellowed linoleum floor. “No one bothered to cut it.”

“I liked it,” Steve says absently. “Suited you. In a modern way, I guess.” Bucky hazards a rough laugh. It’s like sandpaper in his throat.

“Should’ve kept it in a ponytail,” he says. “It was impossible.”

“Like I said,” Steve smiles. “Suited you.”

They lapse back into silence as Steve trims the back and sides of his hair. Steve presses a hand down on Bucky’s shoulder (his right shoulder) and turns him around to do his bangs. Bucky closes his eyes to keep the hair out of them and listens to the gentle snipping sounds the scissors make. He feels an accidental brush of the scissors’ cold metal against his forehead, the warmth of Steve’s fingers as he brushes a strand of hair from Bucky’s face.

“Done,” Steve says finally. Bucky opens his eyes. He turns around and looks in the mirror. It’s…strange, to see his old hair again. (Steve had always cut his hair to save money, he remembers, now that he thinks about it.) Still holding his towel up with one hand, he brushes his silver fingers through his short hair, then lets his hand fall. From the neck up, he’s Bucky Barnes again. But there’s no mistaking who he really is, not with the jagged scars on his chest. Not with the arm.

“You look…” Steve says, although Bucky didn’t ask him. “You look great.” Bucky knows he isn’t imaging Steve’s eyes trailing over his arm and his scars.

“Sorry you had to see that,” Bucky says, pushing past Steve into the bedroom. He makes a beeline for his duffle bag of clothes and shuffles through them. He pulls on a shirt before Steve can even follow him. The sleeves cover the red star on his shoulder.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Steve says, folding his arms over his chest. His expansive, impossibly hairless, perfect chest. Bucky tugs on a pair of pants.

“I thought you’d be asleep,” Bucky continues, like he hasn’t heard Steve. “We should sleep, anyways. We’ve got a lot of road ahead of us.”

“Bucky,” Steve says softly. He waits for a moment – for Bucky to correct him? to interrupt him? to argue? – before he says it again. “Bucky, it’s not a weapon,” he says. “It’s a part of you.”

“Then I guess it is a weapon after all,” Bucky says in a light tone, zipping up the bag. He steps towards the bed. “Are we sharing, or drawing straws for the floor?”

“Bucky—“ Steve says, stepping forward and taking Bucky’s hand.

Steve’s hands are as warm as always, his grip gentle as he lifts Bucky’s robotic hand to his lips and kisses the metal knuckles.

“It’s a part of you,” Steve repeats, caressing his thumb over one of the ridges. Bucky feels the touch like it’s been magnified a thousand times. “And you are what you choose to be, not what someone else made you.” Bucky lets Steve pat his hand again. Finally, he releases it.

He knows he should step forwards and stop Steve before he turns away. He knows he should apologize for getting Steve into this mess. He knows it would be easy to catch Steve’s shoulder and spin him around and kiss him back, like he wants to. He feels the ache in his chest, in the tips of his fingers, and he ignores it. He lets Steve go, and watches him fold a blanket and lay it out on the floor to sleep on.

“You’re being a punk,” Bucky sighs, because although he can’t do much, he can do this. “The bed is big enough for two.”

Steve looks at him wordlessly, unreadable, playing Bucky’s own game. Bucky rolls his eyes.

“Get in the goddamn bed, Steve,” he sighs. “I know you aren’t afraid of me, for whatever stupid reason.”

“There are other things to be afraid of,” Steve says vaguely, crawling into bed and turning out the light. Neither of them say another word, not even as they lie next to each other, staring at the ceiling in search of sleep. Bucky wishes he’d never started playing this game, but he doesn’t know how to stop, and he isn’t sure how to win anymore.

*

“Please, remember,” Captain America whispered as Zola lowered the helmet over his head, covering his eyes. “Remember, Bucky. Remember  _me_.”

The Winter Soldier gritted his teeth and waited for it to begin, trying not to tense his muscles. It always hurt more if he fought. He remembered that, if little else, like muscle memory – the pain of being programmed.

And now, now it was the  _Americans_ who wished to program him, to make him  _their_ soldier, their slave. They would break him again, erase his mind, turn him into their – into Captain America’s  _Bucky,_ if they were deluded enough. They had no less shame than the man who had sent him to kill them all.

Moments passed, but the pain didn’t begin. He waited for a shock, a head-splitting pounding that never began.

“It’s working, it’s working,” Zola assured Captain America, but the Winter Soldier wasn’t so sure. Perhaps the machine was broken, or they didn’t know how to use it. He could play along, wait until they released him, expecting a willing slave…then kill them, and run.

He’d tried to run when his programming failed before. When he’d broken through in the nineties, after the Red Room was no more and Lukin thought he could take the Soldier to HYDRA. Their technology hadn’t worked at first  – but he shouldn’t have remembered that, should he?

“What do you think is happening in there?”

"I don’t know,” Natalia’s voice answered, “I’ve never been programmed without the electroshocks.”

He shouldn’t have remembered her as more than a student, either, but he did. She’d made him better, and had taught him as much as he’d taught her. With Natalia, he’d felt  _warm_ again, for the first time in memory—

“Will it make a difference without the full programming?”

— For the first time since he stood next to  _Steve_  – but no, he’d never –

“I cannot be sure. If you would like me to  _try_ —“

— These weren’t his memories, they  _couldn’t_  be.

“No,” Steve Rogers said, voice firm. “No. We’re not torturing him.”

His chest welled up with fear and shame and loveto hear that voice again, the feeling like – like muscle memory.

“Steve?” he whispered, because Steve was dead – if Steve was Captain America, then he went down in a plane in 1945, as the history books said – and he  _couldn’t_  be here. Steve was dead.

“Bucky,” Steve replied in a broken whisper, gripping his right hand, even though it was still cuffed to the chair. “It’s me. It’s Steve.”

He couldn’t see Steve – he remembered what he looked like, a skinny shrimp of a guy, a scrawny kid with a glint in his eye – but he could feel the warmth of his hand, drawing him out of the darkness.

“Bucky,” Steve said, “I’m here. You’re – you’re here. I promise, I’m not going to let anyone hurt you again.”

As the rest of the memories began to pour in, the Winter Soldier wondered if he really was James Barnes after all.

*

They stop at a rest stop three hours out from the safehouse. It’s the last on their route before they hit nothing but side roads and dirt paths up into the mountains. Bucky orders two coffees while Steve uses the bathroom and takes a seat by the window.

There’s an old man there, a family with two kids, and a pair of college girls. He turns away from them and stares out the window. For once, he isn’t thinking about running for it. He knows a week in the safehouse alone with Steve will change his mind.

“Are you a robot?”

Bucky startles, turning and wondering how the kid snuck up on him. He looks down at his silver hand and curses himself for forgetting his glove in the truck.

“No,” he says. “It’s a prosthesis.”

“It looks like a robot hand,” the kid says again, unconvinced. She’s six or seven years old, with green and purple bands on her braids.

“It’s robotic,” Bucky admits finally. “I don’t have a hand, so I use this.” He wiggles his metal fingers until she grins.

“Cool!” she says. “Iron Man has a hand like that!”

 He chuckles. “Not quite,” Bucky says.

“Can you do this—?” She breaks off to hold her hand out and mimic Iron Man’s iconic repulsor blast.

“It’s just a hand, it can’t do anything special,” he lies. “Sorry, kid.”

“Pleeeeease?”

With a sigh, Bucky raises his hand and pretends to blast some invisible enemy in the distance, making a  _pew!_ sound. The girl claps, and Bucky grins at her.

Bucky looks up to see Steve standing halfway across the room with his arms crossed over his chest, smiling as he watches the two of them.

Bucky’s face drops.

“You should get back to your parents,” Bucky says to the kid, shooing her away. She runs off to her mom, who will probably admonishing her for talking to a stranger. Steve joins Bucky at the table and takes his coffee.

“So,” he says, biting back a laugh. “You do a good Iron Man.”

“Shut up,” Bucky says under his breath. He pops the lid off his paper cup of coffee to give himself an excuse to avoid Steve’s gaze.

“You’d probably get along better with Stark than I do,” Steve continues, either unaware of Bucky’s foul mood or forcibly ignoring it. “He’s a little like Howard, in some ways. He’d upgrade your arm in a heartbeat. That’s probably why he offered to help us out in the first place.”

“It’s not a toy, Steve,” Bucky says quietly. “And I’m not having this argument with you again.”

“I don’t want to argue,” Steve says, “I just want you to stop believing you’re going to hurt me.” He moves forward, as though he’s going to take Bucky’s hand (his right one, his real one) where it sits on the table. Bucky jolts backwards.

“Well, it’s too late for that,” he says, standing up and grabbing his coffee to pitch into the can.

On his way to the bathroom, he passes the college age girls’ corner. They’re whispering at each other, pointing at an oblivious Steve and nudging elbows as they check him out. Always the charmer, Bucky thinks. He tells himself he isn’t jealous.

Steve doesn’t argue his point any further as they get back on the road and drive onwards. Bucky turns on the radio, but all they can get are country songs. He turns it down and listens anyways, letting the words wash over him as he stares at the passing trees.

They’re two hours from the safehouse when the bulletin comes on the radio. Bucky almost wishes he’d left it off.

 _“They are believed to be armed and extremely dangerous,”_  the radio announcer says  _“Police warn that these individuals should not be approached—“_

Bucky punches the off button on the radio.

“Pull over,” he says.

“We’ve got an hour’s head start,” Steve says, driving on. “We can make it to the safehouse.”

“Pull over,” Bucky repeats. “We need to ditch the truck. It’s too exposed out here.” If there were people, they could hide. It’s easy to disappear into a crowd.

“We can lose them,” Steve says firmly.

“Yeah, we can lose them  _if you pull over and ditch the truck,”_ Bucky growls.

“I’m not arguing with you,” Steve says firmly, squaring his jaw and staring straight ahead at the road.

“No, because this is a friendly discussion,” Bucky snorts humorlessly. “Pull over, or I’ll—“ he cuts himself off.

“What will we do?” Steve asks.

“I’m taking off,” Bucky says. “I’ll run faster on my own. Tell them I forced you into it. Drive ‘till you hit the nearest town and tell them I ran for it. They’ll believe you.”

“I’m not leaving you,” Steve snaps.

“No, you’re just throwing your life away,” Bucky shoots back.

Steve  _finally_ pulls over, braking too quickly and burning rubber as he stops on the side of the road.

“Do you  _want_ SHIELD to get their hands on you?” Steve asks. “They’ll get inside your head. They’ll take what they want – by  _any_ means necessary – and then they’ll give you a choice. You spend the rest of your life locked up, or you work for them. They’ll use you.”

“Like they’ve never used you?” Bucky snaps. “If they do catch me – which they won’t – it can’t be worse than what I’ve already done.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Steve says. “I made a promise, and I’m keeping it.”

Bucky sighs. He knows it isn’t any use arguing with Steve. The only other option is to overpower Steve, but he’d still follow Bucky.

“Turn the truck around,” he says. “Facing north, and pull off the road.”

Steve follows Bucky’s instructions. Together, they hide the truck in some brush and grab the emergency wilderness survival supplies that Barton thoughtfully packed for them. They have plenty of cash, water, some food, and enough supplies to last them a week out here, if need be.

Bucky takes the map from Steve and asks for his watch. He eyes Steve speculatively as their fingers brush over it.

“You look like a walking target,” he says, frowning at the shield on Steve’s back.

“You never did like the design, did you?” Steve asks, taking a spare checkered shirt out of his backpack and tying it around the shield to camouflage it.

“Never understood the appeal of dressing in the flag of the enemy and running in guns blazing, no,” Bucky shakes his head. “But you’ve always been spoiling for a fight.”

*

“SHIELD wants him.”

“Yeah? Well, SHIELD can’t have him.”

There was – anger – confusion – fear? –

“Be realistic, Steve, you can’t just –“

“What can’t I do?”

Ah. Steve. He remembered Steve now. It was like trying to remember a dream, a recurring nightmare that slipped in and out of his mind.

“Run away like this! You’re going to get yourself killed – Hill’s out for blood, especially after the bombing. Everyone is.”

Steve. He’d always been there, in the back of his mind, in his sly jokes and the words he chose and the way he moved. They’d taken everything, but they hadn’t taken away the things that made him  _Bucky Barnes,_ not really. You can take away the memory, but you can’t take away the man.

Not that they didn’t try.

“Well, then I guess they’ll have to blame the people responsible,” Steve said firmly.

“Me,” he said weakly in response to Steve’s voice. The argument above him dissolved. “It’s my fault, Steve, I—“

“It’s not your fault,” Steve said firmly. He felt Steve’s hand on his arm. They were traveling – were they in a plane? A car? He had some kind of drug in his system, a sedative, but his body was burning it away quickly.

“It is,” his voice was harsh and coarse, as though he’d been screaming. Why would he have been screaming?

“James,” Natalia said gently. He felt something on his head and he opened his eyes to see her sitting above him in the back of a van. His right arm was cuffed to the cot, but his robotic arm felt heavy. It was deactivated. “For the past few decades, you’ve been…”

“I know,” he said weakly.

“You remember who you really are?” Steve asked. He sat on the other side of the van.

He couldn’t look at Steve.

“I remember everything,” he said. “Barnes and the Winter Soldier. Shoulda just left me, Steve, left me rot in a cell as the Soldier. Deserved it.”

“No,” Steve said firmly. “You didn’t. Don’t. That wasn’t your fault. They did something to you. You were–“

“Brainwashed?” he chuckled. “Like you just did? Stick a bunch of memories in my head, tell me they’re mine—“

“It’s not the–“

“Hey, fellas, we got trouble,” the Falcon said from the front seat. “You’re up, Steve.”

Steve sighed and grabbed for his shield.

“Natasha,” he said before he jumped out of the van, “take care of him.”

*

The helicopter comes from the road, sweeping over the treetops of the forest. Bucky and Steve both look up.

“They’ll have heat sensors,” Bucky says. “You run, I’ll—“

“Get down,” Steve says, grabbing Bucky with one arm and his shield with the other. Bucky grunts as Steve manhandles him to the ground. They crouch beneath a tree, the round shield held over their head.

Steve pulls something out of his backpack and attaches it to the underside of his shield like a magnet. He presses a few buttons and holds the shield up as high as he can.

“Short range scanner disrupter,” Steve explains quietly. Bucky sees the Stark Industries logo on it. “Stark made it for the shield. It has a radius of a few feet.”

“What else you got?” Bucky asks, eyeing the thing. Steve’s fingers are still digging into his side, holding him under the shield, like he’s afraid Bucky will run for it and get caught. It’s a good idea. This charade isn’t going to last much longer anyways.

“Let me worry about that,” Steve whispers, looking away. He hushes Bucky.

The helicopter flies over them. They both hold their breath, looking upwards and hoping that Stark’s put his money where his mouth is.

Crouching beside Steve, thigh to thigh, Bucky turns his head and takes a long, slow, deep breath, trying to calm his heartbeat. He feels Steve’s scent wash over him, mingling with the smell of earth and mold from the forest floor. Steve still smells sweet – but scared, too. It reminds Bucky of another forest in another time. They’d hid in the mud together before, in barns and secret basements and cargo holds. It’s disturbingly similar, except then, his pulse wasn’t racing from the heady closeness of Steve pressing into him. He takes another deep breath, wondering where the shift was between then and now.

“C’mon,” Bucky says, standing up quickly. “They’re gone. It’ll take us a day to walk to the safehouse from here.”

“We still going there?” Steve asks, stowing the device away and throwing his shield over his shoulders, covering his backpack.

“You know of anywhere else to go for a hundred miles?” Bucky asks, raising an eyebrow. He takes out the map and compass again and heads off in the direction of the safehouse. Steve glances up at the sky between the trees. The helicopter’s nowhere in sight.

Bucky keeps walking and doesn’t wait for Steve to catch up.

It gets steadily darker as they make their way through the forest. The brush is thick in places, the trees wide from decades of undisturbed growth. It’s eerie, almost, how dark and quiet the place is. The birds are strangely quiet, as if they sense a predator nearby. Bucky hopes they don’t run into a bear.

Steve makes them stop at night to camp, although Bucky could guide them by the stars if he wanted to.

“We’ve traveled at night before,” Bucky says.

“Yeah, that was the time you ran right into that HYDRA camp, remember?” Steve replies, sitting down and pulling out some of their food and water. He has a solar blanket, but there isn’t much by way of shelter. The temperature is dropping, but they’ll be alright.

“We shouldn’t stop,” Bucky protests. “We could be there by sunrise.”

“We need the rest,” Steve says. “We have most of tomorrow to walk, and it’s all uphill.” He’s not wrong. “Come on, we’ve slept in worse.”

Bucky snorts. He thought he’d never get the mud out of his hair.

“Who’s keeping watch?” he asks, to be difficult.

Steve laughs. “Against the coyotes?” he says, shuffling through the emergency supplies to get to the folded up solar blanket at the bottom of the bag.

He picks up something from the bag and freezes, frowning at whatever he’s holding in his hand. “Barton,” Steve mutters to himself, trying to stow it back into the bag quickly.

“What’s that?” Bucky asks, grabbing it before Steve can stop him. It’s a condom. There are more in the bag. He laughs lightly. “They’re for water,” he says, throwing the condom back at Steve. “Don’t be a prude.”

“Is that why they’re pre-lubricated?” Steve asks, holding it up to prove his point with a skeptical look. Ah.

Bucky awkwardly looks down, away from the condom Steve is holding up, and instantly wishes he hadn’t.

“He didn’t mean anything by it,” Steve says quickly. “He’s—“

“I don’t care,” Bucky says, raising an eyebrow. “Does it bother you?”

“Of course not,” Steve says, sounding affronted that Bucky would think he was.

“Okay,” Bucky says simply, then leans forward to grab a water bottle and a protein bar from the pack.

Steve looks like he’s going to say something else, but he leaves it. Bucky doesn’t push the matter, despite the part of him that wants to ask Steve why it doesn’t bother him.

Steve finally lays out the solar blanket. It’s just big enough for the two of them to lie on and fold over like a makeshift sleeping bag. Bucky takes one corner, Steve the other.

They don’t talk much, except to argue over whether or not they should risk a fire. Bucky wins the argument, but it’s a sour defeat. Blanket or not, the ground is cold and hard, and he hasn’t slept on the ground since…well, the amusement of saying it had been a few decades ran out awhile ago.

He can’t sleep, of course, but neither can Steve, playing into the futility of stopping for the night. Bucky tries to figure out the constellations in the sky through the trees above.

“There’s the Big Dipper,” Steve says, like he’s reading Bucky’s mind.

 “The Big Bear,” Bucky corrects with a smirk Steve can’t see. “And the little Bear.”

“It’s strange,” Steve says thoughtfully, “knowing there’s something more out there, for sure. An entire universe.”

“There’s a lot of stuff out there,” Bucky says after a moment.

“Does it ever scare you, to think of what might be coming?”

Bucky looks over at Steve. He’s staring up at the dark sky, looking at the stars. Bucky had never thought of outer space when he looked at the stars. He thought about the future. The stars had been there a long time, before he was born, and they’d be there after he died. They’d see him through, start to finish. He’d thought of the life he might hold under them, one day.

It’s a different sky, a different day, but looking up at the same stars he’d always seen, he feels almost like a kid again, ready to take on the world.

“No,” Bucky replies softly. “That’s not what I’m afraid of.”

Steve rolls over onto his side, the solar blanket crinkling as he moves. He hoists himself up by an elbow and tries to catch Bucky’s eye.

“Whatever happens,” he says, “don’t blame yourself.”

Bucky rolls over. “Go to sleep, Steve,” he says, turning onto his side. Steve stops him with a hand on his shoulder. He can feel the warmth bleed through his jacket to his skin and gives in.

Steve looks at him and seems lost for words, like he didn’t actually expect Bucky to turn to hear what he had to say.

“I know,” Bucky says slowly. “Don’t blame yourself, either.”

Steve doesn’t look relieved, but he swallows whatever he was going to say and lies back down instead.

*

“Natalia,” Bucky whispered. She was closing the back doors of the van, which Steve had just jumped out of. She looked at him suspiciously.

“Let me outta here,” he said, trying to sound friendlier and more persuasive, but his voice was like gravel. The sedative had almost completely worn off.

“It’s Natasha now,” she said, unholstering a gun and checking it over. It was a power play, not a necessity. He ignored it.

“Rogers is gonna get himself killed,” he said, looking her in the eye. “He has some crazy idea in his head that I’m that Bucky Barnes of his, and he’s—“

“You  _are_ James Barnes,” Natasha said.

“I’m  _not,_ ” he insisted. “I –“ he slipped back into Russian, wondering about the Falcon in the front seat.  _“I’m not him, Natalia. You know that. I don’t know where your loyalties lie anymore, but you know mine. You’ll never see me again.”_

“You aren’t even trying,” Natasha said in English. “You’ll need to be a lot more convincing if you think you’re going to fool me.”

“I’m not lying,” he spat. “Give me control of my arm back. Let me break free. They’ll forgive you, you’ll all walk free – I can take care of myself.”

“Why do you care?” she asked, crossing her arms. “If you aren’t loyal to anyone, why do you care about what happens to Steve? To me?”

“I don’t care about him, but you were—“

“Don’t lie to me,” Natasha said in a low voice. “You called him Steve. You  _talked_ to him like you were James Barnes.”

“I was lying,” he said through gritted teeth, straining against the cuff. He doesn’t  _want_ to break his wrist to get free, but he will if there’s no other choice. “He’d never let me go, you know that. I had to get him out of here. But  _you_ —“

“You must have a concussion or something, because I’m having trouble following this conversation, and we all know I’m the brains of this operation,” Falcon said from the front seat.

“Here’s a bargain, Falcon—“

“Call me Sam. Sam Wilson.”

“You want Rogers back in one piece, right?” he called into the front seat, ignoring Natasha’s glare. “Let me out, point SHIELD in the right direction, and all of you are home free.”

“I don’t know who you think you are – or if  _you_ even know that,” Falcon said, “but if Captain America was risking his life to save  _my_ ass, I wouldn’t throw it away like that.”

“He’s right,” Natasha agreed. “Reevaluate the situation,” she said coolly. “Tell me. What happens to Steve if you run now?”

He bit his lip, wishing she wasn’t right.

“They lock him up, try to get my location out of him,” he answered finally. “Or he dies trying to stop them from getting to me.”

“And what happens if you go along with his plan?” Natasha asked. “If you trust him?”

Well. He thought about where trusting Steve got him before.

“Do the math. What’s the best course of action?” she asked.

Bucky laid back on the cot in defeat. He hated how she knew how to appeal to the cold, calculating logic of the Winter Soldier. But there was something else inside him now, a burning desire to do  _something_ , anything, no matter how stupid or insane. Steve was out there fighting – fighting for  _him_ – while Bucky was stuck inside a van, running away.

“He’ll fare better out there with backup,” Bucky muttered.

“Steve said to get you out of there,” Wilson said over his shoulder.

“Do you listen to everything he tells you to do?” Bucky asked. Natasha shot him a glare.

“Would you rather be in SHIELD custody right now?” she asked. “Because I can arrange a nice SHIELD cell for you if you want,” she said scathingly. “Maybe even one next to Steve, after they try him as a traitor for harboring a fugitive.”

“And you and Falcon?” Bucky asked, raising an eyebrow. “What do you get out of this? Why would you hand yourselves over to SHIELD for a guy you’ve never even met?”

“Why the hell do you think we’re driving away from the fight?” Wilson snorted. “For ex-KGB-whatever, you’re pretty slow.”

*

“I miss running water,” Steve says as he opens the door to the safehouse’s bathroom. It’s a glorified outhouse, honestly, but at least it’s not outside.

“This century’s made you soft,” Bucky laughs.

“What, like we never had running water back then?” Steve says, closing the bathroom door with a sigh. “There’s a well, at least, even if we have to pump it by hand. How did Barton drill a well out here without anyone noticing?”

“Because it’s not Barton’s place,” Bucky says. He’s looking up at the doorframe of the cabin.

The safehouse is a small one room cabin with a kitchenette, one bed, and the basics. There’s a small bookshelf and a closet locked with a keypad and a code that only Steve knows. It’s rustic, more like a honeymoon spot than a safehouse. He wonders if Barton wasn’t really joking about it being a wedding gift.

Steve steps up beside him and looks up at the doorframe.

“What’s it say?” Steve asks, but he stops when he sees the name carved into the wood: ‘COULSON’

Bucky watches Steve’s face harden and close up as he stares at the name. It’s a look he’s seen before, one he hates to see on Steve’s face, the burden of losing a soldier.

“Did you know him?” Bucky asks. Steve’s jaw twitches.

“Not very well,” Steve answers, not questioning how Bucky knows. Bucky doesn’t push.

“I’m going to check the generator,” Steve says suddenly. “It’s supposed to be StarkTech, but you never know. Would you do a run through of the supplies here?” Bucky nods wordlessly. Steve is out the door in an instant.

It’s a boring task, but it’s structured and almost soothing to organize what they have and what they don’t, just in case of emergency. It’s supposed to be calming and reassuring, and he figures that’s why Steve assigned that task to him.

It takes Bucky two minutes. He wonders if Steve should have done this instead.

When Steve isn’t back five minutes later, Bucky decides to take advantage of the time alone to sweep the cabin.

He knows the good stuff is in the closet, but he doesn’t want to risk being caught trying to get past the locks, not now. There isn’t much furniture, the single full bed is clean (well, except for the dirty mags stashed under the bed – Barton isn’t very original, it seems), and the most interesting thing he finds is an empty secret compartment in the nightstand. One of the cabinets in the kitchenette boasts an  _impressive_ amount of booze, though. The sink underneath the water pump had enough cleaning supplies to make a bomb, and a few odd cans of paint and furniture polish to boot.

Bucky stops in front of the tiny bookshelf and looks over the board games on the bottom shelves. Risk, Scrabble, chess, checkers, Trivial Pursuit, and about five decks of cards (and poker chips – he grins, and wonders how much he could win off Barton). The books seem less Barton’s style, although there are some thick collected editions of comic books, worn and dusty. The more Bucky looks at this place, with its liquor cabinet and secondhand library and rustic feel, the more it looks like a vacation home and not a safehouse.

He skims through one of the comic books. It’s one of those cheesy old Captain America comics, of course. He makes a mental note to show Steve later, to give him shit about it. Bucky bites back a smile.

The other books are thick and old…a set of  _Lord of the Rings_ novels, some old science fiction,  _The Collected Works of Walt Whitman_ , some Steven King, Dan Brown, even a few bodice-rippers. Bucky randomly chooses a thick black hard-bound copy of  _The Select Works of Shakespeare._

He realizes it’s too heavy the instant he picks it up.

Bucky flips it open. Starting on the title page of  _As You Like It,_ a square hole has been cut into the pages to make a secret hiding place. A gun sits inside the book. It’s loaded.

Bucky swallows. He hasn’t been properly armed since – since before he got his memories back. His fingers itch for the weapon, the security of a gun, the weight of it in his hands. He could protect them both much easier with this than his bare hands, even considering his arm. To say he’s a great shot would be an understatement.

Bucky shuts the book sharply and sets it back on the shelf, careful to disturb the dust on the entire shelf, so it only looks like he’s brushed his hand over the spines.

When Steve returns to the cabin five minutes later to see Bucky doing sit-ups and muttering a count under his breath, he doesn’t say a word. He avoids looking at Bucky for the rest of the night. Bucky is almost grateful.

The days pass slowly but uneventfully after that. They fall far too easily into routine not unlike their time sharing an apartment before the war. Steve doesn’t put up a fight about sharing the bed anymore, but he insists on heating up their sorry excuse for a dinner and still guilts Bucky into washing the dishes (and makes him pump the water, too, for good measure).

Steve wakes up before Bucky, most days, always leaving a note in clear view of the bed with the date and time written on it, and a promise to be back soon. Once, he even draws a cartoon sloth in the bed, snoring away. It has a star on its shoulder. Bucky sticks the doodle in his pocket, just in case Steve gets it in his head to throw it away later.

They have a lot of free time, most of it spent inside the cabin, reading or playing checkers or seeing who can do the most one-armed push-ups in a minute. (Steve, but Bucky swears he let him win, arm or not).

In the evenings, Steve sits back and sketches something on whatever paper he can find, and Bucky puts his feet up on the kitchen table and plays solitaire and tries to bully Steve into playing strip poker with him. He wonders what he’d do if Steve ever says yes. (Other than win.)

He tries to give Steve time to himself. The one room cabin is just big enough for the both of them, but it feels too small sometimes, the air stuffed up with silence like the room’s been filled with cotton balls. It’s not a perfect metaphor, but sometimes Bucky feels like he’s suffocating, drowning, gasping for air.

Most days, he spends an hour or two outside with a book, not reading, just giving Steve space and taking some of his own. Steve tells him to stay close, eyes wordlessly pleading for him to just  _stay_ , and Bucky relents. He doesn’t know why.

A week passes slowly, the air growing warmer with spring. Bucky is outside one day when it starts pouring rain. He runs back to the cabin, shoving his book under his shirt to keep it from getting wet. He bursts through the door, stomping his muddy boots on the rug, and stops.

Steve is sitting slumped over on the bed, shoulders shaking as he stares down at something in his lap. He’s curled over a notebook, a pencil in hand. He looks up at Bucky, startled, his eyes puffy and  red, his cheeks wet with tears.

 _Shit,_ Bucky thinks. He wonders if he should pretend he hasn’t noticed, slip off his boots and get a glass of water to give Steve time to pull himself together.

But then he notices the half-finished sketch: it’s him and Peggy, the Commandos, even Howard, all of them posed arm in arm. It’s vaguely reminiscent of one of the only group pictures they’d ever taken together. Steve doesn’t have it here with them, but he’s draw it perfectly, line by line on a piece of yellowed notebook paper.

Bucky breaks.

Steve doesn’t flinch away when Bucky sits next to him. The bed dips underneath their weight.

“Hey,” Bucky says awkwardly. Steve wipes his eyes with the back of his hand. “Can I see that?” he asks.

Steve’s grip falters on the sketch as Bucky takes the notebook from him. Steve curls his hands into fists, but doesn’t say anything.

Bucky’s fingers trail over the drawing, careful not to smear it. He hasn’t thought about the Howling Commandos since the memories first came rushing back, and he’s surprised to remember them now, in all their former glory, cracking jokes to lift the weight of what they were doing from their shoulders. Howard, he’d barely known, but Peggy…

“You were in love with her, weren’t you?” he asks, before realizing that perhaps it’s a little cruel. But it hurts, too, that this woman could be everything Bucky could never be. “Are they –“ Bucky clears his throat, “have they all—?”

“Peggy’s in a nursing home,” Steve says in a whisper. His voice sounds wrecked, almost like he’d been screaming.

“They’re all gone,” Bucky says, staring down at the sketch. He’s in the front row, Steve leaning on him, just as he’d always done to Steve when he was shorter. Steve must have memorized the photo, he thinks, spend hours staring at it since he woke up –

“You’re still here,” Steve says, taking the sketch from his hand. His eyes are still wet. Bucky can hardly bear to look at him.

“It’s not the same, Steve,” Bucky mutters.

“Doesn’t matter,” Steve shakes his head. “I’m sorry,” he starts, looking downwards, voice breaking as his eyes well up with tears. He wipes roughly at his face, a silent sob wracking his body, and Bucky can’t watch him like this.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Bucky says, setting a hand on Steve’s shoulder. It says something that Steve leans into the warmth of his hand as he cries, like he’s the touch-starved kid Bucky knew far too long ago. “Hey,” he says more clearly, framing Steve’s shoulders with his hands, trying to get him to look up. “It’s not your fault, Steve.”

Steve lets out a sob like he’s been punched in the gut. “Should’ve caught you,” he says slowly. “I could’ve.”

“No, you couldn’t,” Bucky says.

“Then I shouldn’t have let them do this to you,” Steve says shortly, his head snapping up in momentary anger, tears streaming from his eyes. He brings a hand up to clutch at Bucky’s left shirtsleeve and growls, “Don’t tell me you forgive me for that. Not when you haven’t forgiven yourself.”

Bucky’s stomach drops when it hits him.

He’s has been keeping his distance since they started out together, pretending to sleep, ignoring Steve’s attempts at conversation, turning a blind eye to the heart Steve’s been wearing on his sleeve.

“Don’t talk like that,” Bucky snaps back, even though it’s partly true. He can’t forgive himself, not for what he’s done – to so many innocent people – and to Steve.

“It’s true,” Steve sniffs. “Tell me it’s not.” Bucky looks at the bags under his eyes and sees every sleepless night he’s laid awake listening to Steve’s uneven breathing. He thinks of Steve jumping off a pier, the look in his eyes as he cut Bucky’s hair, his stifled silence as they laid out under the stars in the open air.

 _Why couldn’t I just let you in?_ Bucky wonders.  _Why do I have to fuck everything up?_

Bucky pulls Steve close and lets him cry in his arms. Steve buries his face in Bucky’s shoulder and weeps, his body shaking with sobs as he gasps for air. Bucky rubs his back, almost like he did when Steve had asthma attacks, and lets him cry. With his nose in Steve’s hair, he inhales and closes his eyes, trying to commit to memory his smell. He thinks that this might be what he’s missed the most.

“I don’t have to forgive you for something that isn’t your fault,” Bucky says, feeling like a hypocrite because he knows that, while Steve will turn these words on him, Steve needs to hear them anyways. “Hey, we’re both here now, aren’t we?” He takes a deep, shaking breath himself. “We’re going to be alright.”

*

Wilson stopped the van in a garage.

“What do we do now?” he asked Natasha, turning to look over the front seat of the van. “How’s Steve doing?”

Bucky shifted on the cot, straining to sit up. Natasha still hadn’t taken the EMP off his cybernetic arm. It hung like a dead weight on his side.

“He’s off the grid now,” she said, looking at a device in her hand. It had the SHIELD logo on it. “We take him in, patch ourselves up, and wait for Steve or Sharon to call.” Natasha pursed her lips, like she wasn’t happy about something she’d just said. “Steve says he has some kind of plan.”

“He always has a plan,” Bucky huffed in a low voice. Natasha gave him a look, like she was gauging him differently than before. He wished he could see whatever she was looking for in him.

“We’ll need to sedate you,” she said, almost apologetically.

“After all he’s been through?” Wilson said incredulously, surprising Bucky. “Come on, Nat, give the guy a break.”

Natasha frowned. “If you try anything,” she threatened, “you will regret it.”

“Plus, you’ll have to deal with a disappointed Captain America,” Wilson said as Natasha cuffed Bucky’s hand to his limp metal arm behind his back. “And, trust me, that is  _not_ fun.”

Together, they frogmarched him into the safehouse and into the kitchen. Wilson grabbed the first aid kit and started patching up his arm, while Natasha sat and glared at Bucky. They spoke in low voices about Steve and the Sharon and Hill they’d mentioned earlier – whoever they were. Bucky lowered his eyes and chewed on his lip, thinking.

“What the hell is wrong with them?” Wilson said suddenly, angrily, from where he was perched on the kitchen counter. Bucky glanced up.

“Sharon’s hands are tied,” Natasha said. “You can’t blame her for that. Now that Hill is Director—“

“He’s Captain America!” Wilson said incredulously. Natasha bristled at being interrupted. “If Captain America says something, you  _listen._ ”

“Not if you’re SHIELD,” Natasha said wryly.

“Then maybe I’m quitting,” Wilson said, crossing his arms. At Natasha’s raised eyebrow, he held up his hands. “Why do you think no one’s seen Barton since the Battle of New York? Where the hell has Fury been? Stark’s set up shop in New York – they’re calling it Avengers Tower now, Natasha. Tell me you don’t want in on that.”

“Even if I did,” she said slowly, looking at Bucky out of the corner of her eye. “It pays to have eyes and ears in SHIELD.”

“Can’t do both?” Wilson asked.

“Steve turned down Stark,” Natasha said.

“Steve’s an idiot sometimes,” Wilson shot back. “Right, Barnes?” Bucky found himself nodding, nearly snorting with laughter before he caught himself. He swallowed and clenched his fist behind his back. “Yeah,” Sam said, taking his silence for agreement.

“SHIELD will let him back in eventually,” Natasha said. “Once Fury gets back. Hill’s only Deputy Director.”

“Well, he better get back soon. People are starting to wonder,” Wilson said in a lower voice. “Steve’s – he’ll be tried for treason if they get their hands on him, Natasha. And not just for breaking Zola out – harboring and conspiringwith terrorists, fighting off SHIELD—“

“Zola was in a nursing home,” Natasha snorted. She sat up in her chair and sighed, looking at Sam earnestly. “I’m not claiming to understand Steve’s reasoning, but I trust his judgment on this. He kept us out of the spotlight the entire time, and Sharon will testify that we were with her when we broke into the HYDRA bunker. He’s only ever put himself on the line.”

“I’m not saying he isn’t watching out for us,” Sam shook his head. “But he needs to look out for himself, too.”

With a  _clink!_ , the EMP finally scraped off Bucky’s robotic arm on the edge of the chair.

He jumped up from the table, using his strength to break the handcuffs, and dove towards the exit. Natasha ran in front of him, blocking him bodily, holding up a syringe of sedative.

“Don’t, James,” she said in a warning, but he blocked the motion, sending the syringe flying out of her hands. Natasha tried to punch him, but he blocked every hit, every blow, going on the offensive as she tried to hold him back in vain.

“Get out of my way,” Bucky growled, grabbing her wrist. Natasha cried out in pain and kneed him in the groin, making him step away.

“Stay back, Sam,” Natasha warned in a loud voice.

Bucky advanced on her in the hallway, trying to get past her for the door. With a yell, he punched the wall with his metal hand, leaving a hole in the plaster.

“Let me through,” he said darkly, but Natasha merely tried to bring him to the ground with a kick.

“I know you haven’t been triggered,” Natasha said, out of breath. “You’re in control, James. Wait for Steve. You owe him that.”

“I don’t owe anybody anything,” Bucky said, scraping the wall with his fingers, leaving deep scratches in the paint. “Let me through, Widow.”

With a cry, Natasha punched him in the jaw. Bucky took a step back as she kicked him, blocked another hit and an elbow that threatened to block his windpipe. They were a flurry of limbs and movement, moving down the hallway towards the door, his vision gone clear from the fight. Bucky ducked underneath a roundhouse and jumped to his feet suddenly, raising his left arm and hitting –

Bucky fell back, scrambling to the floor with a start. Steve stood over him, holding his shield, staring down at Bucky with an angry set to his jaw. Natasha stood behind him, chest heaving from the effort of breathing, not even half as furious as Steve.

“If you want to go, go,” Steve said, looking at Bucky where he lay on the floor. “But you don’t have to run, Bucky. Not alone.”

Steve stepped forward and held out a hand to help him to his feet.

Bucky took it.

“Natasha, go call Sharon and get an update,” Steve said, turning to her. “Sam, get the car ready. New Jersey license plates.”

“Steve—“ Wilson started, standing in the wrecked safehouse hallway with a scowl. “Do you know what you’re doing?”

“Come on,” Natasha said, pulling Sam away. “Let’s give them a moment. If Barnes tries to kill him, he’ll deserve it.” She glanced over her shoulder at Steve, but Bucky wasn’t sure why she was pissed at him.

When they were gone, Steve looked at Bucky. He braced himself, waiting for whatever was to come next. The disappointment, the anger, the fear…

“Your arm,” Steve said, reaching out, but stopping just short of touching the metal. Bucky lifted his hand and wriggled his fingers. “Is it—?”

“Cybernetic from the shoulder down,” Bucky said tonelessly. “There’s a socket. You can take it out, if it makes you feel better.” He shrugged.

“No,” Steve swallowed. “I’d never—“

“But I’m just as dangerous without it,” Bucky continued, rapid-fire. “Natasha took my knives, but I could still take you and get out of here if I wanted to. I’m a lot stronger than I used to be. Sedatives don’t work well, the dose you gave me earlier burned out of my system pretty quick. There’s a trigger word to put me to sleep, but I don’t know it. Natasha might, but she hasn’t used it. I’m a bit slower on my right side, of course, still not fond of heights, and I have a cracked rib right now. It’ll heal in three days, though, maybe two if I get enough sleep.”

“What are you talking about?” Steve said, still staring at him like he was a ghost.

“Weaknesses,” Bucky replied. “You seemed like you needed the help, earlier,” he said, a little cruelly. He shook his head, trying to shake the thought from his head.

“We should look at that cracked rib,” Steve said. “Come on, there’s got to be a first aid kit in here somewhere, I’ll—“

 _“Don’t you get it?”_  Bucky hissed, stepping forwards. “I could kill you, Rogers. I’m not going to sit down and – and play catch up with you. I’m a killer. A weapon. I was sent to  _kill_  you.”

“But you didn’t,” Steve reminded him.

“How many people died in that bombing, then?” Bucky growled, clenching his hands into fists. “How many innocent people died? And you don’t even know about the assassinations. They’ve had me working for  _years_ , now, longer than even Natasha.”

“I know some of it,” Steve said. “None of that was your fault. You were just following orders. You didn’t remember who you were,” he continued firmly.

“I still followed them,” Bucky said, shaking his head. “I’ve done things you still don’t know… Things nobody could forgive. Things you can’t wipe clean.”

Steve reached forwards and set a hand on Bucky’s shoulder. “Then I forgive you for all of them,” he said.

Bucky flinched away from his touch. Steve looked burned and tried to hide it, but he couldn’t cover the look quickly enough.

“I understand—“

“The car’s ready,” Wilson said, walking into the hallway. He glanced between Steve and Bucky, then slowly backed away. “I’ll just…go check on Natasha,” he said haltingly. “If you’re going to have reunion sex, keep it out of the hallway.”

Bucky watched Wilson leave. “He’s a character,” he said, almost humorously. Steve tilted his head and looked at Bucky, with his long hair and his dark eyes, his metal arm visible in the leather getup he was still wearing, like he saw something he recognized in the strange man in front of him.

“You’re still Bucky,” Steve said. “That’s all that matters to me right now.”

Bucky wanted to say, ‘ _But I’m the Winter Soldier, too_.’

“What about SHIELD?” he asked.

“I’m done with SHIELD,” Steve replied. “I’m not sure I agree with the code they live by anymore. I’m going to run, lie low for awhile. Make my own way.”

“You can’t run from something like SHIELD,” Bucky said, lowering his voice. “They’ll find you, Rogers, they’ll make you burn for this.”

“They never found you,” Steve said. “Come with me.”

“I—“

“It’s not an order,” Steve whispered. His voice was soft and gentle, having lost all of the edges of fear and anger. “But please, come with me.”

Before Bucky could reply, they were interrupted by Natasha.

“Sharon needs to talk to you,” she said, holding out a cell phone. “She says it’s now or never.”

*

They don’t talk about it, but something’s different. It’s like they’re on the same side again, Bucky following Steve into the jaws of death again. He feels the steel clamp around his ankle, but he doesn’t mind this time.

He lets Steve sketch him the next day in his short-sleeved shirt, arm and all. He watches Steve’s gaze travel over the silver joints of the arm, wondering on its workings as he moves the pencil over the page. Bucky keeps still in the chair like he never could when Steve sketched him before, but he doesn’t feel particularly proud of that. (He doesn’t jokingly offer to pose nude, like he used to.)

When Steve finishes drawing him, Bucky walks over and looks at the sketch over his shoulder. The lines of his shoulders, his neck are hard, making up for the muscles he has there he hadn’t before, but the joints and ridges in his arm are drawn with thin, delicate lines. Steve’s spent more time on his arm than the rest of the drawing, getting every detail perfect, down to the bottom of the star poking out of the bottom of Bucky’s sleeve.

The look Steve has drawn on Bucky’s face gives him real pause, though. It’s soft, his eyes half-lidded, the ghost of a fond smile on his face as he leans his head back. Bucky feels his heart pounding.

“There’s no way I was making that face,” he huffs.

“You were making that face,” Steve laughs.

“I look like a goddamn sap,” Bucky scowls, taking the drawing.

“You’re frowning, now, or else I’d tell you to look in the mirror and see it for yourself,” Steve says, still smiling for some absurd reason. “I can try again, though, if you want to glare at me for a half hour.”

Bucky looks out the window, wishing it wasn’t raining outside. The gray skies haven’t let up since it started pouring the day before, keeping the two of them cooped up inside. Bucky was almost glad for it. He didn’t want to leave Steve alone again.

“Fine,” Bucky sighs, turning back to Steve. “Draw me—draw me—“

“ _Don’t_ say ‘Draw me like one of your French girls,’” Steve groans, dragging a hand over his face. “I get enough of that from Sam.”

“French girls?” Bucky asks, raising an eyebrow. “What French girls? I thought  _I_ was the one who was supposed to have a French girl, who—?”

“What are—? It’s a movie,” Steve sighs, but he’s giving Bucky a strange look. “Just – forget it. You up for a game of poker?”

“Strip poker?” Bucky teases, but he grabs a deck of cards and turns a chair around to sit at the kitchen table. “What movie?”

“ _The Titanic_ ,” Steve says. “Like the ship. What French girl?” he asks suddenly, in a terrible attempt to steer the conversation towards women. He always did freeze up when girls were involved, Bucky thinks with amusement.

“Haven’t you checked any biographies about yourself?” Bucky asked. “You’ve been thawed out longer than I have.” He’s not used to joking about being in cryo, yet, but Steve doesn’t seem bothered by it.

“No,” Steve shakes his head. “And I learned not to Google myself a long time ago.”

“There’s a few pages in the back of that Captain America book on the bookshelf that talk about the real you,” Bucky says, looking down as he shuffles the deck. “An interview with Dugan, even. And there’s a bio for me. Some French dame – a resistance fighter, I guess – came forward and said we had some kind of whirlwind romance.” He swallows, waiting for Steve’s reply.

“You…did?” Steve asks, sounding hesitant. “You never told me. I—“

“I don’t remember it,” Bucky says thickly. “And I thought – either she got a fortune off interviews lying about it – or I just didn’t – I don’t—“

“Bucky.” He looks up when Steve reaches across the table and touches his hand. “It’s okay. We can figure it out. When we get out of here, we’ll—”

“It’s not,” Bucky says, throwing the cards down. “I can remember  _every damn face_ of everyone I’ve killed, but I can’t – I don’t even remember one  _girl_. What if there’s something else I’m forgetting?” He grips the edge of the table, careful not to crack the wood.

“Then we’ll figure it out,” Steve says gently. “I don’t remember any girl, Bucky. And I think I would.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Bucky whispers.

“It doesn’t have to be hard,” Steve replies. Bucky isn’t sure he deserves anything else.

That night, he falls asleep to the sound of Steve’s deep breathing on the other side of the bed, the warmth of his body soaking through the sheets and curling around Bucky as his eyes droop.

Of course, he has nightmares.

He dreams that he’s the Winter Soldier again, that he’s been erased and filled up with that emptiness again. He dreams that Steve is small and fragile once more, that he chases Steve through the streets of their old neighborhood and pushes him up against a wall and wraps his metal fingers around Steve’s throat.

But when Steve looks him in the eyes, he isn’t Steve, and Bucky is strangling himself, the Winter Soldier grinning as he watches the life drain out of his own eyes.

 _“Bucky, don’t make me do this,”_ Steve says from behind, and when Bucky spins to face him, it’s Steve’s turn to push him up against the wall and pull a knife from his belt.

Bucky wakes with a start.

He turns to Steve beside him in the bed, but he’s gone. There’s no note this time. It’s not the first time he’s awoken after a nightmare to an empty bed, but it’s the first time he’s realized that Steve isn’t in the bathroom, or the kitchenette, or the cabin at all.

It’s chilly and damp outside, but Bucky doesn’t bother pulling on a shirt before he goes outside. The rain has broken for the night and the skies are clear enough to see the stars.

Steve is just outside the cracked-open door, sitting on the cold ground with his makeshift sketchbook in his lap. Bucky wonders how much better Steve’s vision must be for him to draw by the light of the full moon.

Steve closes his sketchbook as he looks up at Bucky. He blinks, as though he’s the one coming out of the dream. Bucky realizes how strange he must look, his silver arm shining in the moonlight and his skin pale and white.

Bucky drapes an arm across his chest and rubs at the red star on his shoulder self-consciously, hoping the movement will hide his scars, regardless of whether or not Steve’s already seen them. He can barely feel the motion of his fingers over the star, despite the way it’s wired into his system. It’s like a phantom limb, a ghost of his former self, changed into a weapon that can tear throats and rip off limbs as easy as breathing.

Steve is staring at Bucky. His gaze contains none of the murderous hate of the Steve in Bucky’s dream. He’s all soft, tired lines, half of his face cast into shadow.

“Can’t sleep?” Bucky asks Steve, surprised to find his own voice heavy and groggy. He looks at the bags under Steve’s eyes again and wonders how long it’s been since he was able to get a full night’s sleep. His money’s on something like seventy years.

“You too?” Steve says. Bucky’s nod is a lie, but it’s a small one, considering. He stops a shiver that threatens to build at the base of his spine.

“C’mon,” Bucky says, holding the door open for his sake as much as Steve’s. “You’ll freeze out here.”

Bucky doesn’t turn his back on Steve as they step back inside the cabin. He shuts the door behind them and walks to the kitchenette, considering putting on some water to make them tea or hot chocolate or instant coffee or whatever the hell Barton has in this place. Bucky starts pumping some water into a saucepan, using the cybernetic arm. Lights jump over the curved metal in different patterns and burn into his eyelids, like the sun shining on his joints as he punches through a man’s chest and—

He’s jolted from the memory when Steve joins him at the sink. He puts his hand over Bucky’s on the pump and holds it there. Bucky doesn’t realize his other hand is shaking until he hears the water slopping over the side of the saucepan.

“Come on,” Steve says quietly. “Come on, Bucky, come on, you’re okay.”

The saucepan makes a clanging noise as it hits the sink, and before he knows it, he’s clutching the edge of the counter with both hands like a lifeline, Steve standing a hair’s breath away but not touching him anymore.

“Bucky,” he whispers. “You’re safe. We’re in a cabin in—“

“I know,” Bucky snaps. “I know where we are. I know who I am. You don’t – you don’t have to.”

“I know.” Steve’s voice is soft and low as he asks, “Can I touch you?”

Bucky says yes before he knows what Steve means. He starts with a gentle hand on Bucky’s left wrist, not quite encircling it, but stroking the joint, trying to work some warmth into it. Steve runs his hand slowly up Bucky’s arm, not flinching over the red painted star, and stops at the junction between metal and flesh.

The scar tissue is the strangest mixture of sensitivity and numbness. He feels Steve’s fingers like a live wire on some places, and like ice cubes over others. Steve rubs small circles into Bucky’s shoulder and, slowly, he feels the warmth of Steve’s hand grow on the metal, grounding him.

Steve traces the star absently, until it’s like a burning spot on Bucky’s arm. He pulls away a little.

“Don’t touch that,” Bucky says hoarsely.

Steve backs off immediately, but he asks, “Why shouldn’t I?”

“It’s a brand,” Bucky growls. “It’s…it’s a symbol of who I belong to. Like cattle.”

“I wear a star,” Steve reminds him. “The star is a symbol. It stands for what you want it to stand for. So do you.”

“Your star stands for your country,” Bucky spits. “Mine stands for terror.”

“I don’t know if I have the right to stand for this country anymore,” Steve admits. “And I know you don’t believe in blind loyalty to whatever that star stood for.”

It’s strange to hear Steve talk like that. He supposes that, in a way, Steve’s right. People don’t look at their countries – at America – in the way they used to, and he isn’t sure he fits into this new world. He was once Russian, in a way, before he was HYDRA. Before that, well, he’d never harbored any illusions about who he was really fighting for.

He doesn’t have a country anymore. Maybe Steve doesn’t, either.

 “I don’t believe in blind loyalty,” Bucky says.

“You never did.”

Bucky wants to turn and tell Steve that he’s wrong, that he  _did_ believe, a long time ago. He would have followed Steve anywhere, he’d said as much.

Steve’s hand rests on his shoulder, pulling Bucky to face him.

“You choose what you stand for. You choose who you are,” he says, looking Bucky right in the eye. “It’s not important what people chose for you. What’s important is what you choose  _now._ ”

It’s not a question, but Bucky wets his lips to answer.

“I choose you,” he says simply, leans forward, and kisses Steve.

*

“You’ll change your mind,” Natasha said, crossing her arms and leaning back onto the car.

“Probably,” Bucky shrugged.

“No,” Natasha shook her head. She looked over into the safehouse through the door to the garage, but Steve and Sam were still inside, ignorant to their conversation. Bucky could hear Steve arguing on the phone. “You will. Maybe in an hour, maybe in a week. You’ll realize that he thinks this is your second chance, and you’ll realize that it  _is_ your second chance, and you’ll panic.”

“How do you know?” Bucky asked, affronted.

Natasha blinked once, slowly, like it was obvious.

“So what?” Bucky huffed, ignoring the look she sent him. “Maybe I  _don’t_ deserve this.”

“I never said that,” Natasha said carefully.

“But that’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?” Bucky asked. He raised an eyebrow. “I’ll realize I don’t deserve it. Well, maybe I already have.”

“Have you?” Natasha asked, setting a hand on her hip.

“I don’t,” Bucky shrugged, sticking his hands into his pockets and looking into the house. He glimpsed Steve shifting restlessly from foot to foot as he muttered into his cell phone. “I don’t deserve any of this. Why do you think I’ve been trying to run? The only thing I deserve is to be locked up for the rest of my life.”

“That’s not entirely true,” Natasha said. “Although I think you deserve a good smack upside the head for fighting me,” she smiled. “You may not be that person anymore, but you’re still going to have to learn to live with you past. You deserve a chance to figure out how to make it up – to yourself, and to the rest of the world.”

“And when I figure that out?” he asked.

“Let me know,” Natasha said softly.

 _“Oh, Natalia, you’re too good for me,”_ he sighed in Russian, setting his hands on her shoulders. She warmly accepted the embrace, and the unspoken apology that came with it.

 _“I always was,”_ she murmured, looking up at him in his arms.  _“Tell me, James, if you truly believe you don’t deserve it, why go with him?”_

“Because,” Bucky sighed, glancing inside once more, “he asked me to.”

*

Bucky lets Steve paint his arm.

Neither of them can sleep any more that night. Bucky’s head is still spinning from his nightmare, the world fuzzy and red around the edges, and Steve has looked ready to jump out of his skin since Bucky kissed him.

Bucky digs some paint cans out from beneath the sink and finds a few old brushes, too. It’s outdoor paint, so it isn’t going to wash off.

He sits still, shirtless, as Steve leans over and gently wipes the metal clean with a cloth. The red star gleams like blood on the metal.

“What color?” Steve asks.

“White,” Bucky says. “And a…blue circle around it. Red border.”

Steve leans back and cocks an eyebrow. “You sure?” he asks, reaching for the paint can.

“As ever,” Bucky says. Steve opens the paint can and dips the brush into the red paint. He grips Bucky’s arm gently as he traces a circle around the star. It almost tickles, the brush a light sensation on the arm’s sensors. Bucky isn’t afraid to watch Steve openly as he paints the border. He’s quiet as he works, finishing the circle and opening the blue can of paint, filling in the borders around the star, working carefully over the grooves in the arm.

He paints in the white star last, the white paint barely covering the red below. “Done,” he says as he finishes. “You look…”

“Ridiculous?” Bucky chuckles.

Steve gets up to find a mirror and shows him his reflection. It’s instantly recognizable as the star in the center of Steve’s shield, painted painstakingly on his arm. The paint will chip, Bucky knows, but he doesn’t care. For this moment, and at least this moment, he’s not theirs anymore.

He’s not Steve’s, either – Steve would never let him be – but he’s as close to that as he’s ever going to get again.

“You look beautiful,” Steve says, lowering the mirror. “Always do.”

“Aw, shucks,” Bucky laughed, pretending to blush. “You sure do know how to charm a girl.”

“Rakishly handsome, then,” Steve chuckles. “Like those gangsters in the movies.”

“Just like ‘em. Not sure if I’m gonna kiss you or kill you,” Bucky jokes, although it hits the nail a little too hard on the head. “Fits.”

“I’m pretty sure I know which one it’ll be,” Steve says. He leans forward and steals a kiss, like he’s had to work up the courage to do it. Bucky reaches up to pull him closer, but Steve stops him.

“Watch the paint,” he says with a smile. Bucky huffs.

“I’ve waited ninety goddamn years,” he grumbles.

“Then you can wait another half hour,” Steve smirks.

He doesn’t act surprised, Bucky notices, just relieved, like he’s been waiting for a long time. Bucky wonders if Steve had always known, somehow, if he was biding his time or if, maybe, he’s just pitying Bucky. Steve isn’t exactly shy, but he shies away from relationships, he always has. Bucky can’t think of a dame that he ever really took to, but for the life of him, he can’t think of any guy that did, either.

There’s just perfect Peggy Carter, and Bucky is terribly, horribly, selfishly glad she’s old and gray, because he could never live up to something like that. He almost wishes Steve had his chance with her, he really does – because Steve deserves something like that. He always did.

Once the paint is dry, Bucky gets up and straddles Steve in his chair, the wood groaning and creaking beneath their weight.

“Let me know if I go too fast,” he says, then kisses Steve slow and sweet, savoring every moment in case it slips from his palms.

“I think the two of us have been waiting long enough to go a little too fast,” Steve says when he breaks away. He wraps his arms around Bucky’s waist and stands, picking him up and heading towards the bed.

“Oh my god,” Bucky says a little giddily.

“You’re heavier than you used to be,” Steve says, dropping him unceremoniously on the bed. Bucky wriggles on his back as he looks up at Steve.

“You think it’s the gigantic robotic arm?” he asks, holding up a hand.

“I don’t know,” Steve replies, sitting next to him on the bed and taking the hand. “Let’s see.”

Steve brings the hand to his mouth and kisses his palm. He holds Bucky’s wrist and kisses up the cybernetic arm, his lips meeting the cold metal without the slightest hesitation. There aren’t pleasure censors built into the arm, but Bucky shivers all the same at the sight and the perception of the touch, and then Steve’s lips are on his neck and he’s gasping.

Contact-starved and greedy, Bucky runs his hands  through Steve’s hair, over his shoulders, down his sides, dipping his hands up under Steve’s shirt to feel the warm skin of his stomach. He pulls the shirt up over Steve’s head. Steve grabs him by the shoulders and kisses him with need until both of them are breathing heavy.

“What are we doing here?” Steve whispers as they lay back on the bed, legs tangled up as they kiss and touch. Bucky’s mouth goes dry.

“Whatever you want, pal,” he says, the corner of his mouth quirking up. Steve groans.

“I want you,” Steve says softly, brushing his hand through Bucky’s choppily cut hair. “I want all of you.”

“Okay,” Bucky says breathlessly, like he can’t believe his luck.

Steve raises Bucky’s left hand to his lips and licks the pads of his metal fingers, worrying his tongue over the joints. He sucks a few of Bucky’s fingers into his mouth. Bucky can only feel the sensation of hot warmth and wet on his fingers, but his brain fills in the blanks and he gasps at the sight.

They kiss again sloppily and fumble with their pants, throwing them to the floor. Steve isn’t quiet, not like Bucky imagined him to be, gasping and moaning as Bucky spreads his legs and trails his spit-slicked metal fingers over Steve’s thigh. He ducks his head and takes Steve’s dick into his mouth. Steve’s hands flounder on the sheets and Bucky grabs them and places them on his head. Steve’s fingers twine through his hair and pull gently as Bucky sucks his cock.

He gasps Bucky’s name as he comes, then hauls him up and kisses Bucky hard, despite the come still in his mouth. Steve licks his own taste out of Bucky’s mouth and leaves him groaning and hard as a rock. He wants to beg, but he doesn’t.

Steve rolls over and opens the drawer on the nightstand, pulling out a bottle of lube.

“It was in the emergency supplies,” he says sheepishly, pouring out a little in his hand. Bucky’s about to make a comment about Clint Barton when Steve wraps his slick hand around his cock. He gasps, bucking –  _ha. ha._  – his hips into Steve’s hand and swearing.

“Fuck, Steve,” he gasps. Steve kisses Bucky as he jerks him off, leaving Bucky panting into his mouth with desperate urgency building, waiting to bring him off, slow and gentle. He feels a whining noise build in the back of his throat and is surprised to recognize those noises as his own as he heads towards the edge. He sees stars at the edge of his vision as he comes, muffling a high-pitched gasp with Steve’s bare shoulder.

“I got you,” Steve says gently, wrapping an arm around him. He’s shaking a little, Bucky realizes, from the exertion. “I got you, Bucky.”

“You got me,” Bucky repeats, smiling giddily at Steve’s attempts at comfort. “Boy, did you just get me.” He laughs and kisses Steve.

“Are you too cool for cuddling?” Steve asks, stroking his fingers over the painted star on Bucky’s shoulder. Bucky leans over Steve to reach the nightstand and grab a handful of tissues to clean them up.

“Yeah, but no one else’s gotta know,” he snorts. Steve returns his smile.

They doze naked together under the covers, Steve curled around Bucky like the protector he always wanted to be. Bucky rests his head back on Steve’s chest and listens to his heart beating steadily,  _tha-thump, tha-thump, tha-thump,_ and tells it silently to keep beating.

Steve’s still asleep at dawn, but Bucky hasn’t been able to rest. His mind whirrs away, even though he’s exhausted and sated and almost... _content_. He needs to get some rest, to be ready for anything. He  _wants_ to sleep here, curled up in Steve’s warmth, but he can’t help thinking that this is all wrong.

Steve deserves better than him, better than a fucked up sadistic murderer. Maybe – once – maybe Bucky would have taken this shot, whether or not he thought he deserved it, but now, he doesn’t know if he can continue to be this selfish.

He’s careful not to wake Steve as he slides out of bed and pulls on his clothes. He’ll leave Steve the majority of the supplies, hike down to the nearest road and hitch a ride to the next town. He knows if he turns himself in, Steve will, too, so he’ll have to run.

He knows where the former leaders of the Red Room are – those that didn’t defect to HYDRA when the Russians shut it down, and those that brought him there, like Lukin. He bets he knows more about HYDRA than anyone in SHIELD: the vaults, research facilities, underground factions, leaders.

There’s a list of people out there that need to answer for what they’ve done, and that’s a better way to spend his time than this.

“Were you going to leave a note?” Steve says, interrupting Bucky’s thoughts.

Bucky turns to see him sitting up on the bed, the sheets fisted in his hands. Steve is a work of art, he always was – his skim unscarred and perfect, muscles bulging as he leans over to pick up his pants.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Bucky says, throwing on his jacket. He watches as Steve dresses in a stony silence, his expression resigned.

“Did you decide that just now, or is this your usual reaction to a one night stand?” Steve says harshly, folding his arms over his chest. Bucky hates to hear the venom in his voice, but he understands. He deserves it.

“I know I have shitty timing,” Bucky mutters, “but I can’t…have… _this._ ”

“What’s ‘this?’” Steve asks, throwing his hands out.

“I don’t know,” Bucky says, turning with a sneer. “I don’t know, okay? I don’t know what I’m doing here, I don’t know why I came. It was a mistake – it was – it was all a mistake. I was lying to myself. To both of us.”

“Was it all really a lie?” Steve asks, looking him in the eye. Bucky can’t bear it, he turns his head to the side and blinks furiously, trying to clear his vision. “Or are you just telling yourself that because it’s just one more way to punish yourself?”

“ _Stop asking me questions!”_ Bucky yells. He throws the backpack down and rounds on Steve.

“Bucky,” Steve says, holding his ground, “whatever happened as the Winter Soldier, that wasn’t you.”

“Of course it was!” Bucky growls. “I did it. It was me.”

“You didn’t know—“

“You really think I didn’t know what I was doing?” Bucky asks, a hysterical note to his voice. “I knew how to do it. I knew how to speak five languages and shoot a gun better than anyone and the best way to crack a man’s neck. I knew it was wrong. I didn’t know my name or my history, but I still knew what I was doing.”

“You didn’t know who you were,” Steve says. “You didn’t know what you were really doing.”

“But I  _did_ , Steve,” Bucky says, voice breaking. “I knew what I was doing, even if I didn’t know who I was. That person – the Winter Soldier – I am him. I can feel his thoughts and his memories and his pain and he’s – he’s  _me_. I made those decisions, as that man, and I can remember it all. I killed people.  _I_ killed people.”

Steve is silent for a long moment.

“I’ve killed people,” he says quietly.

“Stop it,” Bucky interrupts. “Don’t – don’t compare yourself to me. You fight for better things than I ever have. You aren’t a killer. You’re a hero.”

“You used to fight for me,” Steve sighs. “I thought –“ he cuts himself off and shakes his head.

“I can’t fight for you anymore,” Bucky says. “Not as I am. I’m not worthy of that. I’m not that man.”

“Then make it your responsibility to become someone who  _is_ worthy of it. A second chance,” Steve says. Bucky is envious of the hope in his eyes, but he can’t believe it. He can’t trust himself anymore.

Steve will trust him until the ends of the earth. He’ll chase him, if he leaves. He’s stubborn and determined at his best, and even if he won’t force Bucky to stay, he’ll follow him wherever he runs.

If he’s going to do this – if he’s going to run – he’ll have to make sure Steve stays behind.

“Are you saying that because you believe I’m worth it,” Bucky spits, “or because I’m a good fuck?”

Steve takes a step back like Bucky’s slapped him.

“Or were you trying to get me to stay?” Bucky continues, stepping forward into the space Steve abandoned, aggression apparent in his shoulders. Steve lets Bucky corner him against  the wall, but he still falls back into something like a fighting stance, his feet braced, hands curled up to defend himself if Bucky starts throwing punches. It’s a pose Bucky has seen Steve make so many times before – before the serum.

“Don’t,” Steve says, his voice a warning that Bucky ignores.

“Did you really think I wanted you that badly, Rogers?” he chuckles darkly in a voice he hasn’t used in weeks. “Did you think you could trick me into staying if you showed you  _cared_?” He leans in, closing the space between them with a sinister smile. “That I wouldn’t jump ship the moment you couldn’t protect me anymore because you were sucking my dick?”

“I know what you’re doing,” Steve whispers, throwing his hands up to hold Bucky back. Bucky grabs his wrists, circling them with his fingers, and backs Steve up against the wall. “Stop it, Bucky.”

“But you were wrong.” Bucky says. “You can’t keep me here anymore. It was all a mistake.”

“The only mistake I made was not talking to you sooner,” Steve replies, his eyes alight as he stares right through Bucky. Steve is on the edge of heartbreak, clinging to his last shred of hope, his jaw set with the firm resolve Bucky loves in him. He doesn’t know how much longer he can keep this up.

“I could  _kill_ you,” Bucky says darkly, pinning Steve’s arms to the wall above his head. “I had so many chances. You shouldn’t have trusted me, Rogers.” He wants Steve to believe him, that he’s capable of that, that he is dangerous and cruel and remorseless.  _He_ believes _that._

 “You didn’t,” Steve says unflinchingly. He’s close enough that Bucky feels his breath on his face. He looks Bucky in the eyes. “You could’ve, but you didn’t.”

“All the same,” Bucky says. “This was a mistake. Go back to your life, Rogers. Forget about me. It was easy the first time. It’ll be easier the second.”

“Bucky,” Steve says, hurt and voice tilting from stubborn towards pleading. “Please, don’t tell me you believe that. I never forgot you. I never gave up. I—“ he leans forward, touching their foreheads together despite his hands pinned to the wall, and Bucky lets Steve kiss him.

The kiss is gentle and desperate, Steve’s last plea for him to stay, and Bucky finds he can’t pass it up.

Steve pulls away, letting his head fall back against the wall.

“What’re you doing?” Bucky says. He can hardly hear his own voice over the muffled beating of his heart in his throat. “Why won’t you  _fight_ me?”

“I am fighting,” Steve says. “Fighting  _for_ you.”

“Steve—“ Bucky cuts himself off and lets Steve’s hands fall to his sides. Bucky looks down, but Steve brushes a hand over his cheek and under his chin, bringing his gaze back up to him.

“I love you, Bucky, you know that,” Steve says softly, leaning closer.

_I love you._

He freezes.

_Kill him. Kill this man._

The Winter Soldier wraps his metal hand around Rogers’ throat and presses him against the wall.

*

With crossed arms, Bucky stood in front of the car, barely suppressing his desire to glare at Steve as he argued on his cell phone.

Natasha and Sam stood nearby, exchanging whispers and awkward glances between Steve and Bucky.

“No,” Steve said into the phone with a deep scowl. “Sharon. Look. I’m not – I’m not delusional, it’s –“ he sighed as the woman on the other end of the phone interrupted him again.

“I can’t do that,” Steve answered, his voice quieter than before. He scuffed his shoe against the cement floor of the garage. “You don’t understand.”

 _“Then make me understand, Steve,”_ Bucky heard through the phone speakers, his hearing enhanced enough to pick up Sharon Carter’s voice, firm and unyielding.  _“How is this guy more important to you than SHIELD? Your freedom? Your_ life?  _Who is he?”_

Steve’s voice was soft and clear as he whispered, “Everything.”

*

“Bucky,” Rogers chokes from under the grip of the Winter Soldier’s metal hand. “Bucky – stop –“

_Kill this man._

The Soldier cuts Captain Rogers off as he presses harder, squeezing his windpipe. Suddenly, Rogers kicks him in the stomach, sending him flying backwards. The Soldier hits the floor with a roll and scrambles to his feet, squaring his shoulders before he dives towards Rogers again.

“Stop!” Rogers yells as the Soldier barrels towards him. He throws up his arms in a defensive stance, blocking all of the Soldier’s blows. “Your name is James Buchanan Barnes,” Rogers says, “I call you Bucky. Please don’t make me do this.”

The Winter Soldier raises his cybernetic fist, but Rogers grabs it and twists it away with all of his strength.

“You can fight this, Bucky,” Captain America pants as he holds the Soldier off. “Don’t fight me, fight  _this_. You don’t have to hurt anyone.”

“Shut up,” the Soldier growls, ripping his arm out of Rogers’ grip.

He uses its strength to throw Rogers back like a rag doll. His body makes a loud  _thud_ as it hits a bookshelf, but Rogers doesn’t go down that easily. Amongst the fallen books, he pushes himself to his feet.

“Bucky,” he says again, desperation in his voice. The Winter Soldier prowls closer, but Rogers retreats. He circles around the bed, out of his reach. “Look at the star on your arm,” he says as the Soldier stalks him. “Look around. We came here  _together._ We’ve been in the same car, sleeping in the same bed for days. You came here of your own free will. We’re friends, not enemies, Bucky, please—“

_Kill him._

The Soldier jumps over the bed and tackles Rogers to the ground. From there, the fight is a blur of limbs. He gets a hand around Rogers’ neck, but then he’s flipped onto his back, Rogers straddling him and trying to pin his arms down, whispering some nonsense in his ear.

He frees a hand – his right – and throws it out, fingers catching on the books strewn across the floor, scrambling for purchase.

The heavy black book he’s aiming for flips open. The Soldier pulls out the gun, aiming upwards, finger on the trigger, and pulls it with a  _bang!_

The shot goes wide and hits the ceiling, but Rogers jumps away, failing to disarm him. The Winter Soldier blocks his blows and gets to his feet. He points the gun at Rogers where he stands, feet away.

“Bucky,” Rogers says hoarsely. He holds up his hands in surrender. Slowly, he takes a step closer. The Soldier steadily moves the gun up to aim right between his eyes.

All he has to do is pull the trigger.

“Bucky,” Rogers says, taking a step forwards. “I’m not going to hurt you.” He holds the gun level as Rogers steps closer, ignoring the weapon in his face. “No one’s going to hurt you. This isn’t who you are. You aren’t a killer.”

_Kill this man._

His vision blurs.

“I’m going to kill you,” he says, like his hand isn’t shaking.  _Why is his hand shaking?_ “I’m going to kill you,” he repeats.

“Are you?” Rogers asks in a whisper, stepping into the Soldier’s space, pretending like the cold muzzle of the gun isn’t pressed against his temple the moment he steps into range. “You aren’t a weapon, Bucky. You can fight this. You can make your own choices. Don’t…don’t do this to yourself. Come back to me, Bucky,” Rogers pleads. “Stay with me.”

Rogers’ body is warm pressed against his, his eyes sad and pleading. He can’t look at them, he can’t – He closes his eyes, finger tensing on the trigger, and then the smell hits him.

Rogers smells like the sweet salt taste of summer, like sweating pavements and alleyways and baseball games in the street. He smells like the cool air at the top of a Ferris wheel at night, the seaside and the snow and the muddy trenches of war. He smells like iron and blood and fear, hope and light and  _home._

The gun clatters to the floor.

He follows a moment later, shaking, curling up in on himself. He screws his eyes shut, blocking out the light, the man in front of him.

Another moment passes and he feels arms around him, firm and steadying, and lets himself be held.

“Bucky,” Steve whispers in his ear. “Bucky, Bucky, Bucky. It’s okay, you’re okay. You’re going to be okay.” He wants to believe that, almost more than anything.

“I almost killed you,” he says, his voice muffled. He fists his hands in his hair and doesn’t open his eyes.

“You didn’t,” Steve murmurs. “You fought it.”

“It was a trigger,” he mutters. “They programmed it into my brain, that if anyone ever said that to me – that – I should –“ he shivers violently, but Steve just embraces him tighter, like he can hold Bucky together.

“I’m sorry,” Steve is saying when he finally calms his breathing. “I’m sorry for what they did to you.”

Bucky opens his eyes and looks up at Steve. There’s anger in his jaw and fear in the lines of his face. He still stares at Bucky like he’s not sure how he got here or when he’s going to slip through his fingers again, but that he’s glad to see him. He sees hope.

Bucky lifts a hand and brushes the hair off Steve’s forehead gently. Steve doesn’t flinch away from the touch of cold metal on his temple. Bucky loves him, more than he can stand. It hurts, even with Steve staring at him like he’s everything, because he knows that’s one thing he’ll never be able to be.

“I thought I’d lost you again,” Steve says quietly, running his hand up Bucky’s arm and resting it on his jaw. He strokes a thumb over Bucky’s cheek, staring at his face like he’s trying to memorize it. Bucky lets Steve look for a long moment.

“I’m sorry for what I said,” Bucky says.

“There’s nothing to be sorry for,” Steve shakes his head.

“There’s a lot to be sorry for,” Bucky replies. He rests his hand over Steve’s, holding it against his cheek. His palm is warm and calloused. Steve runs his thumb over his cheekbone. Bucky wants to never forget this again. “I shouldn’t have said those things to you. And I’ve been acting like an idiot. I’m sorry I dragged you into this mess.”

Steve smiles softly and claps him on the shoulder. “If it’s your mess, it’s my mess,” he says.

Bucky smiles back weakly. He stands and Steve follows him to the bed, where they sit side by side. Bucky stares stonily forwards at the mess he’s made of the cabin, the furniture and books scattered over the floor, the gun lying abandoned. He wants to hurl it out the window as far as his arm can throw.

This isn’t going to last. He’s known it since the beginning, from the moment he got into a car with Steve instead of slipping away. There’s a list in his head…names, faces, places…HYDRA bases where he’d trained and been trained. The people who did this to him. Who want to kill Steve.

“You still want to leave,” Steve says, reading him like a book, as always. “You want to go after them.”

“Do you blame me?” Bucky asks. Steve sighs.

“No,” he admits. “Sometimes, there are things you have to do.”

“There are more triggers up here,” Bucky says, tapping his temple with his finger. “Every moment I waste, I risk hurting someone. I need to find out what they are.”

“Do you have to do it alone?” Steve asks. When he looks up, Steve meets his eyes and holds their gaze.

“It’s not going to be easy,” Bucky warns him, but Steve snorts.

“It never is,” he says. “But I’ll be there for you, if you want me to be.”

“You aren’t going to tell me to dig two graves?” Bucky asks, nudging their elbows together. He looks over at Steve and still can’t believe he’s here next to him, his arm around Bucky’s shoulders, his body an anchor, tying Bucky to him.

“The way I see it,” Steve says, that determined look in his eye once more, “we aren’t taking revenge. We’re avenging.”

The warmth of Steve beside him is all Bucky needs as reassurance.

 

_The End._

**Author's Note:**

> ETA: [I've now posted one of my alternate endings on my tumblr!](http://sarriane.tumblr.com/post/92111253430) :)


End file.
